The Last Days

Rating:
Summary: A powerful film, everyone should see this one
Review: A film by James Moll

Winner of the 1998 Academy Award for Best Documentary

I do not feel that I have the words to adequately describe this film and my reaction to it. I have seen "Schindler's List", it is a powerful, haunting film. While it is based on a real event of the Shoah, it is still a fictional film. There are actors playing parts and despite the brutality we see in the movie, everyone goes home at the end of the day. What makes "The Last Days" so much more powerful is that the five primary interviewees are survivors of the Holocaust. They are telling their stories of their lives and their experiences of Hitler's Final Solution. There is actual video footage, and photographs from the time, and it is still shocking to hear and to see, and I would suggest that it remains necessary to hear and to see.

This is the story of five Jews from Hungary. They tell of their experiences before, during, and after the war. They were all in various camps: Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen. Their stories are incredible, and since the stories are being told by the men and women who experienced the Holocaust, they are all the more powerful. We learn how they were rounded up and put into the train cars, what they thought, why they didn't actively resist, and what happened to the rest of their families. We also get to see them each go back for the first time to the concentration camps they were held in. They are with their children, and are revealing little details, mostly painful, as they remember them. One man, as he walks through the gates says that even after all these years, the memories are just as fresh as when he was a prisoner.

I don't feel that my description does this film justice. It is a beautiful, powerful, and ultimately necessary movie. Despite the fact that we may have heard various stories of the Holocaust over the years, we still need to hear these stories because pretty soon there will be nobody left alive who lived through it, and these stories will be all that is left. These are important stories, and "The Last Days" does an exceptional job at telling these five stories.

Rating:
Summary: A powerful film, everyone should see this one
Review: A film by James Moll

Winner of the 1998 Academy Award for Best Documentary

I do not feel that I have the words to adequately describe this film and my reaction to it. I have seen "Schindler's List", it is a powerful, haunting film. While it is based on a real event of the Shoah, it is still a fictional film. There are actors playing parts and despite the brutality we see in the movie, everyone goes home at the end of the day. What makes "The Last Days" so much more powerful is that the five primary interviewees are survivors of the Holocaust. They are telling their stories of their lives and their experiences of Hitler's Final Solution. There is actual video footage, and photographs from the time, and it is still shocking to hear and to see, and I would suggest that it remains necessary to hear and to see.

This is the story of five Jews from Hungary. They tell of their experiences before, during, and after the war. They were all in various camps: Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen. Their stories are incredible, and since the stories are being told by the men and women who experienced the Holocaust, they are all the more powerful. We learn how they were rounded up and put into the train cars, what they thought, why they didn't actively resist, and what happened to the rest of their families. We also get to see them each go back for the first time to the concentration camps they were held in. They are with their children, and are revealing little details, mostly painful, as they remember them. One man, as he walks through the gates says that even after all these years, the memories are just as fresh as when he was a prisoner.

I don't feel that my description does this film justice. It is a beautiful, powerful, and ultimately necessary movie. Despite the fact that we may have heard various stories of the Holocaust over the years, we still need to hear these stories because pretty soon there will be nobody left alive who lived through it, and these stories will be all that is left. These are important stories, and "The Last Days" does an exceptional job at telling these five stories.

Rating:
Summary: If Only These LAST DAYS Were Also the Last Time
Review: A picture is worth a thousand words. And so a *moving* picture, clipping along at the rate of 24 frames per second, has the potential to be priceless. THE LAST DAYS proves that, and does so powerfully and with uncommon eloquence. Focusing on the Nazi campaign against Hungarian Jews during the last few months of World War II, the film interweaves recent interviews with survivors of this atrocity with vintage documentary film footage and photographs. The result is a very potent and poignant lesson that speaks of our common humanity (and potential for inhumanity), the mob mentality, individuality, and how those human dynamics come into play during the course of history. I found at the end of the film that my shirt collar was damp from tears that I had not realized I was shedding, and that the storytellers leave a lasting impression --- a week later, their words and faces are still sharply etched in my mind, and I suspect I will always remember them.

The film-to-DVD transfer is flawless, and there are powerful extra features to explore: a still archive, deleted sequences, the theatrical trailer, and much, much more. I would honestly recommend that you prepare to spend some time "processing" what you learn and experience while watching this disc, and that adults be sensitive to the impact that this material may have on less mature viewers. Truly Hitler's "Final Solution" is the stuff of unimaginable horror, and this most worthy Oscar-winner pulls no punches in exposing a very real nightmare to the light of day.

Rating:
Summary: I won't call it "enjoyable"...
Review: But of course this is one documentary that's not meant for the audience to "enjoy". It is fact based and involves interviews with people who were victims of the holocaust. I had seen Schindler's List before, but feel that this documentary was better since real people were interviewed and actual footage shown. I cried when I saw the interviewees trying to hold back tears while they described what they had seen and heard and told of losing their loved ones. I think this is a good and educational film. It's a sort of "warning" I think.

Rating:
Summary: Painfully Poignant
Review: Even with German losses mounting in the last year of the war, Hitler pushed on with his Final Solution, rounding up 440,000 Jews in occupied Hungary in 12 weeks and shipping them off to the camps.

This wrenching documentary, directed by James Moll and produced by Steven Spielberg, uses modern-day interviews and archival footage to follow five survivors, including Tom Lantos, now a congressman from California, into and ever so painfully out of this hell.

The Last Days does not, I suppose, cover much new ground, and it's not always clear whether Moll aims to document the Hungarian Jews' experience or present a wider overview of the end of the camps. But seldom has the Holocaust been described with such vivid narrative power.

One woman recalls how she kept hold of diamonds entrusted to her by her mother -- swallowing them, passing them through her system and retrieving them in the latrine. The degradation was absolute, yet her spirit proved greater.

At times difficult to view, this film is a must see.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best, very powerful
Review: For those of us who have never had the opportunity to meet and talk with Holocaust survivors, this is a must-see and a must-own! Takes you there in a very personal way!

Rating:
Summary: WOW!
Review: I am, and have been for many years, an avid reader and watcher of Holocaust books and films. I have watched many great movies on the subject including Escape from Sobibor, Schindler's List, Anne Frank and the wonderful Life Is Beautiful (a must watch if you think your life [stinks) but this docu-movie has to be one of the most thought provoking on the subject. Using 5 actual survivors of the Holocaust, no actors here, this tear jerking, highly inspirational movie has my vote as one of the 5 top movies of all time. Some scenes will horrify and sicken, some will make the watcher mad, but the over all message of the movie is learn... lest we repeat. I think this film should be shown in schools to teach our children the real history of the Holocaust, the insane reasonings behind it and hope that they learn to be more loving, caring and more respectful of each other. As Speilberg says at the start of the movie non of us are born evil, filled with hate... it's something we learn. So if we can learn evil and hate, then there's a chance to teach tomorrows generation love and understanding. A brilliant film, worth every penny and then some.

Rating:
Summary: The most moving work I've seen on the Holocaust
Review: I originally bought "The Last Days" in the form of a used video & I quickly replaced it with this DVD from Amazon. I want this documentary to last throughout the years so my children can watch it when they're older. I was reluctant to write a review b/c words no doubt will fail to express how touching this film is. As the Holocaust survivors relive their stories, I couldn't help but feel a human connection. The most powerful moments are the survivors going back to Auschwitz with their grown children. Survivor, Renee, brings her rabbi son which is a testament that the Jewish people have not lost their faith despite all they have been through. I recommend this film to teach and enlighten.

Rating:
Summary: The most moving work I've seen on the Holocaust
Review: I originally bought "The Last Days" in the form of a used video & I quickly replaced it with this DVD from Amazon. I want this documentary to last throughout the years so my children can watch it when they're older. I was reluctant to write a review b/c words no doubt will fail to express how touching this film is. As the Holocaust survivors relive their stories, I couldn't help but feel a human connection. The most powerful moments are the survivors going back to Auschwitz with their grown children. Survivor, Renee, brings her rabbi son which is a testament that the Jewish people have not lost their faith despite all they have been through. I recommend this film to teach and enlighten.

Rating:
Summary: Good Supplement to Weisel's NIGHT
Review: I teach high school English. I feel that this an excellent choice to show in conjunction with reading Weisel's NIGHT. His novel also talks about the last days of World War II. So you can make a comparison between his story and the survivor stories in the documentary. It also helps those visual learners better understand what Weisel was going through. I orginally wanted to show Speilberg's Shindler's List but it's rated R and I thought it would create too much of a stir. The documentary is rated PG-13, so it's a little easier to swallow but also very truthful. I believe that some of my students came away with a new appreciation for what they have here in America.