The Grey Zone

Rating:
Summary: The movie I have been waiting to see.
Review: This is the best movie I have seen this last year. Being interested in the genre of Holocaust films I found this to be the most realistic yet. It does not flinch in showing the horror that existed in Auschwitz-Birkenau and particularly in the crematoria and gas chambers. This is the movie to show to those who claim "the Holocaust never happened." It may be horrifying in its portrayal of history. Let us hope by watching this movie that more Holocausts and genocides don't occur again.

I have been interested in the Sonderkommando and read all the same source materials that Tim Blake Nelson consulted for this film. Miklos Nyiszli's "Auschwitz" and "Amidst the Nightmare of a Crime" compiled by members of the Sonderkommando (and buried near the crematoria in Birkenau) were the main sources Nelson used. His film kept true to events in both books. Some may say this film is a horror fest. Let us not forget that the Holocaust and the Nazis were a horror fest.

David Arquette, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi and Mia Sorvino all deliver Oscar worthy performances. They make the characters believable. Nelson did an exceptional job directing this. Keitel had an instrumental part in seeing that this picture was made. The whole cast worked for less to be sure this important picture was made. I commend the whole cast, crew and producers for making this film. I feel it will be a contendor for many Oscars. This film is based upon the play of the same name Tim Blake Nelson wrote. When it played in New York it won numerous awards and received rave reviews.

I hail this as the best most realistic Holocaust film ever made. Go see it if you desire to know the truth.

Rating:
Summary: As Disturbing as Any Holocaust Film You'll Likely See
Review: This film, written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson, is based on a true story written by a Hungarian doctor (a Holocaust survivor who worked under Mengele). You are instantly, from the first eerie shot, drawn into the inner-world of the Nazi death camps, into the realm of the Jewish workers in charge of removing and burning the bodies from the gas chambers. By doing this work, the Nazis grant them an extra four months to live and allow them extra rations. They are doomed, and they know they are doomed. Life is worth a gold watch, or maybe not even that much. The performers -- Harvey Keitel, David Arquette, Mira Sorvino -- are nearly unrecognizable in their uniforms or prison garb, their heads shaved closely. Death is commonplace, hardly worth raising one's head to observe. It's unlike any Holocaust drama, and perhaps, just perhaps, a vision of the unimaginable experience itself. At the end, the director draws something unexpected and close to miraculous out of the flames and ashes. Moving, thought-provoking, disturbing.

Rating:
Summary: Horrifying, but not gory
Review: I just want to add a comment to some of the reviews posted here. I'm worried that descriptions of this film as 'graphic,' 'gory,' or 'a horror fest' will leave readers with the impression that this is a blood-soaked 'Ilsa' movie. This is not the case at all. This film leaves one dumbstruck with horror, but only because of the knowledge that human beings actually lived through the sooty, grey, dreadful existence dramatized here. The characters in this film live with death of friends and with the looming inevitability of their own ends, and this mood - not anything visual - is what will stain a viewer's soul.

Yes, there are occasional scenes of dead bodies, usually being stacked and moved by the sonderkommando, but it is not a bloody, gratuitous use of this imagery. In fact, it is handled about as tastefully as it can possibly be, given the subject matter.

What is hypnotic about this film is witnessing the awful things that men will do to live another day, and yet in the middle of all of this, how they redeem their souls by refusing to commit one more horrible act. Why is this one task any more awful than all the others? Why do 'this' and not 'that'? I doubt even these poor people could have answered, but a time comes when men must say, 'Enough. Not this. No more. It has to stop here.'

If only their captors had had the strength to come to this conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: Grey Zone is Slow, Depressing, and Authentic.
Review: Holocaust movies are very difficult to make and "The Grey Zone" goes a long way towards making a very authentic Holocaust film, but unfortunately it isn't very entertaining. The story of the Holocaust is one that I feel strongly needs to be told, but this film isn't the best vehicle for telling that story...

The film tells a story of the Auschwitz death camp and specifically of the Kommandos or work groups recruited from the Jews to run the camps. Most of the film shows the dismal lives of the work crews and their attempts to organize an uprising. Some other reviewers have criticized the film for events that seemed too outlandish to be true, but I can say after having read dozens of Holocaust books, spoken with survivors, and seen most of the film footage that survived the war that the stories all rang true for me. Among the stories was the tale of an old man who was recruited onto a work crew working the crematoriums who was forced to shovel the corpses of his own wife and family into the ovens. It's a gruesome story, but also a very true one.

The one ray of light in the film isn't the uprising, but the work crew's chance discovery of a little girl that survived the gassing. At great risk, the work crews hide the little girl and summon a Jewish prisoner doctor to revive her. He revives the little girl and they attempt to hide her indefinitely. The character of the doctor, Miklos Nyiszli, a Hungarian pathologist is both real and well known. He worked as Joseph Mengele's (a twisted man who used live human beings for medical experiments) assistant and was never able to function as a regular human being again. He survived the war. Without feeling that I'm ruining the movie for anyone, the work crew's attempts to save the girl were all for naught as was the attempted uprising. However, the prisoners and work crews were able to disable one of the crematoriums that the Nazis were never able to rebuild.

It's hard to say if the acting was good since we never really meet any of the characters and many of the characters names aren't mentioned until very late in the film. This may have been an intentional decision by the director, but it made it very hard to get to identify with any of the characters. The film has an impressive cast including David Arquette, Allan Cordunes, Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino, David Benzali, and Steve Buscemi. Harvey Keitel who isn't known for accents did a more-than-passing job as a German Nazi guard.

This film is based upon the play of the same name that Tim Blake Nelson wrote. When it played in New York it won numerous awards and received rave reviews. The play was based on the book "Auschwitz" by Doctor Miklos Nyiszli. The book is well written, but didn't survive the transition from book to play to film format well.

I gave this film four stars instead of five because of its' extremely slow plot, which I don't think could keep the attention of either a disinterested party or someone who hadn't heard of the Holocaust before. I gave it four stars instead of three because the film is truly memorable with a great musical score, good acting within limits, and a very poignant story.

I mildly recommend this film and suggest that "Shindler's List" would be a much better film to view to learn about the Holocaust.

Review by: Maximillian Ben Hanan

Rating:
Summary: Terrifying Tale of Unspeakable Horror
Review: THE GREY ZONE is the finest film yet made about the horrors of the Nazi Final Solution for the extermination of the Jews and other undesirables in the concentration/death camps such as Auschwitz and Birkenau. While other movies about the Holocaust may be more accessible to the public at large and thus more apt to win Oscars, THE GREY ZONE is based upon hard facts and tells those facts in the most visually compelling and emotionally devasting manner imaginable. Tim Blake Nelson directed and penned the screenplay based on his own play of the same name which in turn was based on the writings of camp survivor Dr Miklos Nyiszlis. The title is descriptive on many levels: the constant darkness of the atmosphere around Auschwitz from the smoke and ash debris of the crematoriums, the different zones with the camp that designated the various levels of waiting for annhilation, and that zone (grey) between life (white) and death (black) that allowed some of the Jews to elect to be Sonderkommandos - workers who lead their own people to the showers, reassuringly taking their clothes, locking them in the gas chambers, then unloading the bodies onto carts to transport to the crematoriums where they actually had to place the corpses into the ovens and cart away the ashes after the burnings. As the 'desparation of doing anything for survival' makes the indvidual do the incomprehensible, so does this film explore how crushed were the minds of these fated men and women.

Nelson achieves a harrowing sense of reality by uncompromisingly showing all phases of life and death in the camps and he does this so successfully in his choice of terse taut dialogue, quiet voices, lingering images of eyes, and a pacing that seems as formidable as the facts at hand. He keeps the lighting, the atmosphere, the scoring, and the acting level at such a suffocatingly low key that the story becomes just that much more devastating. He also has drawn superb performances from an outstanding cast: David Arquette is brilliant in his embodiment of all that is pitiful in the destiny of these events, Allan Cordunes is stunning as Dr Nyiszlis, Harvey Keitel IS the Nazi in control, and Mira Sorvino, David Benzali, and Steve Buscemi are equally superb.

The living memorial of this true story is that it tells of the only uprising of the Jews in the camps in a 1944 incident that managed to permanently destroy about half of the crematoriums in Auschwitz before that uprising ended in the mass execution of the perpetrators. A case in point of the sensitivity of this film: during the uprising the hauntingly beautiful "Alto Rhapsody" of Brahms is superimposed on the action - one of those inimitable moments of the marriage of arts as any ever captured on the screen.

This is a very fine film but it may not be one that everyone can tolerate seeing. It is extrememly vivid, it does not spare the eye, but it never stoops to sensationalism. Even in the most gruesome of scenes there is a palpable presence of the indestructable human spirit. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Rating:
Summary: Devastating
Review: I have seen many movies based around the Holocaust mostly through a number of university courses I have done over the years (both as an under and post-graduate). Of all the movies I ever have seen, none have affected me as much as The Grey Zone. This movie is a "must see" for anyone interested in the period of history - actually on second thoughts, it should be required viewing for anyone mature enough to deal with the subject matter - but be warned that it may haunt you for days afterwards. I would also advise that you do not allow any children to view it or have access to it.
I rank this film well above such films as Schindler's List and The Pianist - not that they are bad films, they're not - they are great works of art. But these films (and others) still insist on following the Hollywood formula of requiring survival stories, victories, and heroes. The Grey Zone is brave enough to attempt to show that for millions of people, such things were absent.
The sets, landscape, and the scale of the operation depicted are all very accurate to the historic record. If you have ever seen the famous 1950's French documentary "Night and Fog", you recognise how accurately the camps and buildings have been recreated in The Grey Zone. The sparing use of music (in part due to economic constraints) is also extremely effective. Its place is taken by the constant throb of machinery and industrial noises.
I would take issue with those reviewers who criticise the film for the heavy use of swear words. The Sonderkomando depicted were Hungarian Jews. The Hungarian Jewish community were highly integrated into normal Hungarian society and spoke the vernacular language, not Yiddish. As a Hungarian speaker myself, I can assure you that even at the best of times, Hungarians can swear like troopers and I have no doubt that under the circumstances, the language would probably have been even more "colourful" that that used in the film.
The term "Enter the Zone" has been used for years to market everything from fad diets to video games. For once, had it been applied to this film, it would have been appropriate - for if you watch The Grey Zone, it is likely to change you.
Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: No grey here!
Review: While not perfect, The Grey Zone does have many wonderful qualities. To attack the flaws first, yest, it does feel rather stagy, with its heritage in theater all too clearly showing. And the dialog is indeed frequently extracted from some grade B 40s movie. And I did find the male leads a little unbelievable. But, in a film of this magnitude, these are minor quibbles. Prevent that fifth star, but still, an excellent film. Some have objected to Harvey Keitel's accent. Yeah, well, sure it might have been better without it, but I actually would have liked more phony German accents to distinguish the German speakers from the Jews. Other critics have objected to its violence, its nudity, and its grossness. Well, this was a violent, naked time. I am no fan of gratuitous nudity or violence, but I found them effectively, even tastefully, used here, with sounds, looks, and results showing us what happened.

What's good about it? Well to start, the title is great. Contemporary morality loves to tell us that all dilemmas are shades of grey, where negotiation is the answer. If we could just discuss our differences, we could reach an amicable solution. But faced with the monstrous evil of gassing and burning Jews by the trainload, there is no grey. What discussion would be appropriate here? What negotiation? How about we stun them first before gassing them? Or cut back the number of the damned? Or maybe provide a musical accompaniment not just on their entrance to the camp, but on their exit as well? No, this is evil, pure and simple, no compromise, no place for negotiation or concession, no grey zone, but all black and white.

Another spectacular image was the lawns being watered while this evil was going on. Life was normal, even suburban, with green grass a priority in this camp, while humans were being slaughtered. The idea of grass being nurtured and cared for while people were not is beautiful. We see the lawns throughout the film, always green, always cared for, always getting what they need. What is important to this culture is evident. And despicable.

The cold-heartedness of the murders is wonderfully demonstrated in two scenes. A major character is shot when we do not expect it at all. Just bam, and he's dead. No build up, no drama, no contortions or speeches. Every one watching must act unaffected by this. And in one of the most brilliant scenes, as the newly arrived are being encouraged to remember the number of the hook where they hung their clothes, a confrontation occurs. A screaming woman is casually shot in the head to silence her. And it works. Anyone inconvenient, annoying, or unable to account for themselves properly, was shot. They were cargo, not people, and difficult cargo was removed.

I found the photography quite effective. The smokestacks flaming and spewing their ash never let us forget just what the business of this place was. The grim, muted colors, the cramped, confined feel, the oppressive editing and the well chosen music all made the feel as real as it could be for those of us in our living rooms.

Better than Schindler's List. Much better than Life is Beautiful. A film that pulls no punches, and makes a powerful case for standing up to evil even when your tools are ineffectual and your hope nonexistent.

Rating:
Summary: It was real
Review: I usually don't like graphic movies, but this was really good. I watched it with my honey, who loves WW2, history, and Nazi related movies. I was rivited the entire time. I loved the actors, and the dialogue. If you rent the video, pay attention to the quiet spoken words. You can't be cooking dinner, on the computer, or reading the newspaper while watching this, or all you'd get is the violence. The horror is very real and upsetting. Don't let little kids see this!! Overall, I was impressed.

Rating:
Summary: Tim Blake Nelson's story of the 12th Sonder-Kommandos
Review: I knew that "The Grey Zone" was about a sonder-kommando unit at a Nazi concentration camp, which in and of itself would be an intensely dramatic situation. The sonder-dommandos where the Jews at death camps, such as Auschwitz II-Birkenau, who escorted their fellow Jews to die in the gas chambers, then took the bodies to the crematoriums, and disposed of the ashes. For four months the sonder-kommandos carried out their duties, and enjoyed (for lack of a better word), extra food, cigarettes, and even clean sheets. "The Grey Zone" is set in October of 1944, which meant that the end of the war was in site as Allied troops were moving on Germany (this is before the Hitler's last great counter offensive, the Battle of the Bulge), so four months could well mean being alive. Of course, this is if the Nazis do not decide to kill everybody in the camp before it is liberated.

Actually, there are a lot of "ifs" behind this 2001 film, directed by Tim Blake Nelson and adapted from his stage play. If you have a chance to live in a death camp, do you take advantage of that opportunity even if it means collaborating witn the Nazis who are gassing your people? In many other cinematic tales of the Holocaust there is the recurring idea that the sonder-kommando were worst that the Nazis, because they betrayed their own people, and the biggest "if" of all in this film remains what would YOU do if you were in this situation? You can say, "No, I would never do that," but then how many stories about the differences between behavioral intentions and overt behavior do you want me to tell you?

I thought that haunting question was what "The Grey Zone" was about, but then I discovered that this was actually a historical drama, in the sense that it was based on a specific historical event: the October 7, 1944 uprising when members of the 12th sonder-kommando succeeded in blowing up two of the four crematoria at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. We learn at the end of the film that the ovens were never replaced and the significance of this accomplishment can only be guessed at in terms of how many lives were saved because the largest of the Nazi death camps had its capacity cut in half. But the actual revolt ends up being a relatively small part of the film. More importantly, it sets up another moral dilemma for the men of the 12th sonder-kommando.

The leaders of the sonder-kommandos are played by David Arquette, Daniel Benzali, Steve Buscemi and David Chandler, and they have planned the revolt, while Natasha Lyonne and Mira Sorvino lead the women who work at the munitions plant and having been stealing gunpowder to be used in the attack. I mention the names of the actors without the characters both because names had been replaced by numbers in the camps and because having people like Arquette and Buscemi unforgettably acting against type is pretty memorable. The crisis comes on the eve of the uprising when a young girl (Kamelia Grigorova) survives the gassing and an impromptu decision is made to save her. The idea of burning her alive is too much for these men, but the question is whether they can risk what they are about to do for one person (you can see why this worked as a stage play and again, why the uprising itself is not really the main point of the story). This plot twist is critical, because without it "The Grey Zone" become less about moral dilemmas and more about one of the few times concentration camp inmates fought back against the Nazis. Would the 12th Sonder-kommandos have done what they did if they did not believe the end of the war was in sight? Why did the previous 11 groups never even try to do anything similar? Questions abound in both this film and its wake.

Nelson's play is based in part on the book "Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account," by Miklos Nyiszli (Allan Corduner), who did the autopsies for Dr. Josef Mengele's infamous experiments on twins. He is a collaborator of a different type, doing his grim work because SS-Oberscharfuhrer Eric Muhsfeldt (Harvey Keitel) has promised to keep Nyiszli's wife and daughter alive. Again, the question of what you would do to stay alive or to save the lives of those you love, comes to the forefront, as does the question of what would then be considered going too far and where would you draw the line? Consequently, "The Grey Zone" is part of what I would call the second generation of Holocaust films, that go beyond providing the details on what happened in the camps and telling stories which are set in concentration camps. They are still about the Holocaust, but in a different way from what we have seen, most notably on the television mini-series "Holocaust" and "War and Remembrance."

Rating:
Summary: What is Up with the Negative Reviewers?
Review: I am shocked by the negative reviews of this movie. Anyone who thinks "Schindler's List" was a good movie about the Shoah doesn't know anything about the Holocaust. The problem with "Schindler," "Life is Beautiful," and that PBS film from the seventies is that those films all ignore the tensions & conflicts between the inmates themselves. "Treblinka" by Steiner, "This Way for the Gas, Ladies & Gentlemen" by Borowski, "Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land" by Nomberg-Przuytyk, "The Drowned & the Saved" by Levi--and dozens of others--all talk about the plight of the prisoners who became "muslims," and the brutality of the inmates who ran the different housing blocks. A prisoner became a "muslim" once that person became ill, discouraged, starving--and gave up hope. The "muslims" were so named because they would rock back & forth when sitting--similar to Muslims when they prayed (accord to Borowski). Inmates were responsible for the day to day operation of the camps, and there was a clear hierarchy; a strong social structure. In her book, Ms. Nomberg-Przuytyk explains that while it was terrible to get hit by the SS guards, it was much more shocking and demoralizing to be beaten by other inmates. Finally, Primo Levi makes it clear in all his books that the inmates who did the work they were assigned, did not try to shirk or hide from their tasks, ate their regular food rations and did not steal (or "organize") additional food--those people were all dead in six months. Inside the camps, if a prisoner was going to survive, survival had to come at the expense of other inmates. End of story. I invite everyone reading this review to read "The Grey Zone," a chapter from Levi's "Drowned," which discusses the morality behind making such choices.

Now--with that kind of background, let's approach this film. For the reviewers who didn't like the "f-word"--I don't know what to say. The film makers are trying to communicate not a literal translation, but instead the emotional equivilent--expressions that communicate the same rage, hopelessness, anger. I'm sorry, but "oh dear" just won't cut it. More ridiculous are the complaints that actual inmates did not use profanity. Those men had to trick thousands into dying in the gas chambers, in exchange for a few additional months of life. A character in the movie even discovered the bodies of his own family, and put those bodies in the oven. Men willing to do that are going to draw the line at bad language? Read Filip Muller's "Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers." Did you know there was a brothel in Auschwitz?

The scenes of the sonderkommandos sitting around, drinking wine, eating rich foods--that is right out of Borowski's stories. All of that food was taken from prisoners brought to the camps, and sent directly to the gas chambers. The conning of the newly arrived prisoners into the gas chambers for a "shower"--everyone of the books I've mentioned describes those scenes in detail. The movie's portrayal of struggles between the the different cliques (the "hungarian" jews, the "polish" jews, the "greek" jews), as well as different parts of the camp competing against each other--all accurate. Harvey Keital as a fat, drunk, stupid, cynical, slob--very typical. Mia Sorvino's character could be any number of women described in Nomberg-Przuytyk's book. The hopeless anger, the grittiness, the arbitrary senseless cruelty--the whole feel of this movie is right.

This is almost a perfect movie, if your favorite author on the Holocaust is Primo Levi.

That said, I do have two criticisms of the movie. The film begins with the doctor main character having a conference with an older, bald guy, with a small amount of gray hair. I'm not sure, but apparently that was supposed to be Mengle. God I hope not--because part of the horror of Mengle was his boyish good looks. He had very black, very full dark hair. He had a pleasant smile, and looked much younger than his actual age. I must be mistaken, because there's no reason to cast an old bald guy as Mengle.

A second criticism is more difficult. I love this movie, because of its feel, its accuracy, its subtlety. However, if you don't know much about the death camps, this movie may be hard to follow. But it's not as hard as some of these reviewers would have you believe. For example, at one point some SS soldiers are walking on a roof with gas masks on, shaking what looks like colored rock salt crystals out of a can down some open pipes. I can see that some people may not recognize that was how the zyclon-b gas was dropped in the death chambers.

If you have any interest at all in Auschwitz, and want to see a movie that will give you a far truer picture of camp life--then see this movie. But if what you're interested in is believing that everyone in the camps were all one big happy family--well, there's lots of choices out there for you.