Themes: Fighting the System, Crimes Against Humanity
Main Cast: David Arquette, Daniel Benzali, Steve Buscemi, David Chandler, Alan Corduner
Release Year: 2001
Country: US
Run Time: 108 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Actor, writer, and director Tim Blake Nelson adapts this grim look at the Holocaust from his own play, based on Miklós Nyiszli's book, Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. The film centers on the Sonderkommando: Jewish concentration camp prisoners whose job was to herd their fellow Jews into the gas chamber, and to dispose of the bodies following the execution. In return, these prisoners received food and a little more time before their own executions. As the members of the sonderkommando struggle to orchestrate what would be the only armed insurrection in Auschwitz, a group of them discover a 14-year-old girl who somehow survived the gas chamber. The girl becomes a symbol for their own spiritual salvation and they become obsessed with keeping the girl alive, even if it endangers the uprising that could save thousands. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Review
This wrenching Holocaust film tells the story of the Sonderkommandos, squads of Jews in the death camps who performed the Nazis' dirty work -- presiding over the inmates' extermination, loading the dead into ovens, shoveling the ash of the newly incinerated -- in exchange for a brief reprieve from death. Based on a play of the same name by director Tim Blake Nelson, The Grey Zone is an earnest, if problematic, evocation of the 20th century's darkest moment. Nelson's interrogation of the moral conundrums that his characters face takes the form of a stage-bound script that is too declarative by half. Compounding matters is the too-familiar cast; recognizable faces like David Arquette, Mira Sorvino, and Steve Buscemi are a constant reminder of the movie's artifice. Flawed as it is, The Grey Zone carries undeniable visceral impact. The film offers perhaps the most unflinchingly brutal depiction of the workings of a death camp ever captured in a fiction film. Although some critics have suggested that Nelson's meticulous re-creation somehow trivializes its subject, The Grey Zone never comes across as an exploitative effort. In a way, the movie's unrelenting horror, its aversion to affirmation, and the complete absence of redemption are a testament to its integrity, if not an outright rebuke to recent Holocaust films that, inadvertently or not, have domesticated the tragedy to appeal to mass audiences. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide
The title comes from the title of an essay by Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi. The film tells the story of the JewishSonderkommando XII in the Auschwitz concentration camp in October 1944. These prisoners were made to assist the camp's guards in shepherding their victims to the gas chambers and dispose of the bodies in ovens.
The film opens in October 1944, in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. A small group of Sonderkommandos are plotting an insurrection that, they hope, will destroy at least one of the camp's four crematoria and gas chambers. They are receiving firearms from Polish citizens in the nearby village and gunpowder from the UNIO munitions factory; the women prisoners who work in the UNIO are smuggling the powder to the men’s camp among the bodies of their dead workers. The women are eventually captured by the Germans and savagely tortured, but they don't reveal the plot.
Meanwhile, a Hungarian-Jewish doctor, Miklos Nyiszli (Allan Corduner), who works for the Nazi scientist Josef Mengele in an experimental medical lab, has received permission from Mengele himself to visit his wife and daughter in the women’s labor camp. Nyiszli is quite concerned about the safety of his family and believes that Mengele’s orders will keep them from the gas chambers.
A new trainload of Hungarian Jewish prisoners arrives and all are immediately sent to the gas chambers. As the group is given instructions about "delousing," a fearful, angry man in the group begins shouting questions at one of the Sonderkommando, Hoffman (Arquette), who has been issuing the instructions. Hoffman beats him to death in an outburst of frustration, in an attempt to make the man stop talking. After the gassing of this same group, a badly shaken Hoffman finds a young girl alive beneath a pile of bodies. He removes her from the chamber, and, after informing the leader of the insurgency, Schlermer (Daniel Benzali), takes her to a storage room and summons Nyiszli, who revives her. The group decides to hide her in the children’s camp. While the prisoners hide her in a dressing room, SS-OberscharführerEric Muhsfeldt (Keitel) suddenly walks in. Noticing that one of the prisoners present, Abramowics (Buscemi), is there illegally, he shoots him, prompting the girl to scream and to be discovered. Nyiszli then takes Muhsfeldt outside and tells him about the uprising, but cannot tell him where or when it will begin. Muhsfeldt agrees to protect the young girl after the uprising is suppressed.
The insurrection begins and Crematoria I and III are destroyed with the smuggled explosives. All the Sonderkommandos who survive the explosions and gunfights with the SS are captured. They are held until the fire in the crematorium is extinguished and executed shortly after. Hoffmann and a fellow prisoner, Rosenthal (David Chandler), conclude that the girl will not be set free after she is forced to watch the executions. After all captives are shot, the girl is allowed to flee toward the main gate of the camp. Before she can run very far, Muhsfeldt draws his handgun and shoots her. The film closes with a voice-over recitation by the dead girl.
Historically, it was Crematorium IV that was destroyed on October 7, 1944.[2]
Production and release
The film was based upon Nelson's own play adapted from Nyiszli's book. A 90 percent scale "model" of the Birkenau camp was built near Sofia, Bulgaria for the production of the film using the original architectural plans.
The film was first released on DVD on March 18, 2003. In 2008 it was released on DVD in the UK.
The film received the 2002 National Board of Review Freedom of Expression Award.[3]
