The Grey Zone
by Tim Blake Nelson
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DVD details
Actor: David Arquette, David Chandler, George Zlatarev, Michael Stuhlbarg, Velizar BinevDirector: Tim Blake Nelson
Brand: Lions Gate
Writer: Tim Blake Nelson
Producer: Avi Lerner
Producer: Brad Weston
Producer: Christine Vachon
Producer: Danny Dimbort
Producer: Danny Lerner
Writer: Miklos Nyiszli
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 108 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-03-18
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lions Gate
DVD Reviews of The Grey Zone
DVD Review: I AGREE with Michael Perry and here is some bibliography
Summary: 3 Stars
As one who regularly teaches Holocaust literature and film, I was finally disturbed at the anachronisms of the language and attitudes of these men of the Sonderkommandos (who did not, by the way, as one reviewer claimed, 'elect' to join; many did not even know what they were selected for -- and those who refused were immediately killed)
but more to the point, Michael Perry is right on target with his comment:
Those who made this film seem captive their own culture and place in history, unaware that any other exists. Most of those involved in these historical events were born in Eastern Europe in the first three decades of the twentieth century. That was a culture far different from our own. In the film, they are portrayed as acting and sounding like they were born our West coast in the last decades of the twentieth century. They're vain, self-obsessed and foul-mouthed with small and petty egos. [they could be East Coast too, by the way]
I'm not talking about a lack of the slight Hungarian accents that more talented filmmakers might have added to lend a bit of realism. The problem is not that most of the characters have modern American accents. The problem is that their attitudes and the content of what they're saying is that of today's Los Angeles rather than the Budapest of long ago. Their debates about what to do have all the sallowness of those waiting in line to get tickets for a rock concert. The result rings untrue. "
This is why I would never teach this film or recommend it to my students.
more's the pity, since the film takes risks in other ways.
Finally, for those interested in personal testimony, besides Filip M?ller, who appears in Lanzmann's Shoah, author of Eyewitness Auschwitz - Three Years in the Gas Chambers, there is the most recent: nside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz by Shlomo Venezia (Wiley & Sons, 2009), The Holocaust odyssey of Daniel Bennahmias, Sonderkommando Rebecca Camhi Fromer, and the excellent work of Gideon Greif, We Wept Without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz, and the rare book, Scrolls of Auschwitz, containing translations of the testimony buried in bottles and other receptacles in the crematoria in Auschwitz.
DVD Review: 4 stars out of 4
Summary: 5 Stars
The Bottom Line:
A movie that works on nearly every level, The Grey Zone succeeds as a Holocaust story, as a moral question with no easy answers, and as a showcase for actors who are much better here than ever before; it's not a cheery movie, but it is a very good one.
DVD Review: Too Real
Summary: 5 Stars
The previous comments say it all. This left me shaken, for the portrayal of the camp and its horrors is so normal in its explicit context, that the bodies, the ovens, the killings, the Germans, are here not so much more than birds singing and leaves falling. I would suggest anyone before watching this masterpiece to first watch "Conspiracy" to understand what led to this hell on earth. DVD Review: A seriously flawed film
Summary: 3 Stars
I wish I could praise this film, I really do. The historical events that lie behind it deserve more talent than those who made it seem to possess. Major flaws weaken what might have been a great film.
First, probably in an effort to `improve' the story, they muddle the history. There was a teenaged girl who did miraculously survive the gas chambers at Auschwitz, but that was at a different time and her fate was not that portrayed in the film. Bringing her into a revolt by the inmates who ran Nazism's machinery of death merely confuses the plot. Will she be saved or will the plot to destroy the crematoria succeed? The writers and directors never settle on which they want to portray, and the result is a mess.
Second, those who made this film seem captive their own culture and place in history, unaware that any other exists. Most of those involved in these historical events were born in Eastern Europe in the first three decades of the twentieth century. That was a culture far different from our own. In the film, they are portrayed as acting and sounding like they were born our West coast in the last decades of the twentieth century. They're vain, self-obsessed and foul-mouthed with small and petty egos.
I'm not talking about a lack of the slight Hungarian accents that more talented filmmakers might have added to lend a bit of realism. The problem is not that most of the characters have modern American accents. The problem is that their attitudes and the content of what they're saying is that of today's Los Angeles rather than the Budapest of long ago. Their debates about what to do have all the sallowness of those waiting in line to get tickets for a rock concert. The result rings untrue.
Finally, there's a general sloppiness about the plot. Attempting to portray those who wanted to use the revolt to escape as selfish makes no sense. The Nazis could not permit any eyewitness to the inner workings of their death camps to remain free and would have to take soldiers out of action to recapture them. Those who escaped would be helping to defeat Germany as effectively as those who remained to destroy the machinery of death. There's also Hollywood's usual ignorance of weapons. Actors in the film shoot people at long ranges with pistols with an accuracy that would have won them a gold medal at the Olympics. Other blunders are even more serious. No German officer in these camps would have placed women being brutally tortured to make them talk in a situation where they could end their misery in an instant by throwing themselves on an electric fence. A bit more care with the script would have weeded those errors out.
In the end, the significance of what these people were doing in 1944 does make up for the inadequacies of those making the film in 2001, but this film could have been much better in more talented hands.
--Michael W. Perry, editor of Dachau Liberated : The Official Report
DVD Review: The Grey Zone
Summary: 5 Stars
I had been seeking this movie for quite some time. I had been told by several outlets that the movie was no longer available. I looked it up on Amazon.com and was able to find the product. It was purchased and received in a very timely manner. The movie was what I had expected and I could not be more satisfied.
Description of The Grey Zone
Based on real life events this film chronicles a unit of auschwitzs sonderkommando a special squad of jewish prisoners who staged the only armed revolt that would ever take place at auschwitz. Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 02/01/2005 Starring: Steve Buscemi Mira Sorvino Run time: 108 minutes Rating: R Director: Tim Blake NelsonThe title of Tim Blake Nelson's harrowing drama of Jewish death camp prisoners who rise up against their captors to "destroy the machinery" refers as much to the compromise and cloudy morality of collaboration as to the gray world coated in the smoke and ash of the crematoriums. Inspired by real-life events at the Auschwitz death camp, The Grey Zone stars David Arquette as a soul-deadened laborer whose being fiercely jolts to life when he finds a young girl alive among the gassed corpses. He's the heart and soul of an outstanding cast that includes Steve Buscemi and Daniel Benzali as revolt leaders, Allan Corduner as the shunned camp doctor, and Harvey Keitel as the commandant. Nelson's rapid pacing, intimate shooting, and terse, jagged dialogue give the moral debate a discomforting immediacy as it races a deadline. When doom hangs in the air, sure death creates unique priorities. --Sean Axmaker
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