Image ruins imagination. So wrote
Claude Lanzmann, French director of the epic nine hour documentary
Shoah a grueling, frequently uncomfortable and fascinating series of interviews with various people who lived through the horrors of the Holocaust. Lanzmann refused to use any archival footage of the event because he felt that it would fail to capture the multitude of stories and viewpoints but would instead replace it all with a solitary and simplistic image of suffering. Thirty years later however and the Holocaust has become so visually familiar that the sad day has now arrived that someone has decided to detail the full on impact of the gas chambers. It takes a despicable type of filmmaker to have so little sensitivity towards a major historical tragedy and
Uwe Boll definitely fits that mould. Very much a twenty first century Ed Wood directorial figure, Boll has seen the entire back catalogue of his work smashed to pieces by the metaphorical hammer of the critics. One
hilarious reviewer said of his work
Alone in the Dark that it was so poorly built, so horribly acted and so sloppily stitched together that its not even at the straight-to-DVD level. Can you imagine such a thing? At least up until recently Boll has only offended video gamers with his horrendous adaptations but a new teaser trailer for the film Auschwitz proves that he truly knows no bounds when it comes to trying to raise controversy for financial gain. Watching this initial footage left a rather a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It is graphic and paced like an action film as if its purpose is to entertain as opposed to enlighten the audience. It is an instant gratification trailer for the torture porn generation, using an unspeakably dark and traumatic event to blatantly satisfy young audiences with an adolescent appeasing narrative. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS8E71RUOLU I studied the Holocaust quite intensely for my dissertation and I have developed some strong opinions about the way the unimaginably painful event is represented on screen. Contrary to popular belief I think that many of the acclaimed Holocaust films are far too melodramatic and all knowing in their approach to depicting the tragedy.
Schindlers List for example represents every character as a stereotype barring Oskar Schindler himself. It is also sentimental and evokes an emotional response which gives the audience a sense of connecting with the horror. In truth however there is no single story of the Holocaust, there are millions and so the event can not be given a universal truth on either a logical or emotional scale. No-one should be walking out of a screening thinking that they have just been told the story of what happened and this for me is where Schindlers List was ultimately flawed in its approach.
Life is Beautiful also won Oscars despite using the subject of the Holocaust as a means to telling a child centred fable. Benignis intentions appeared to be harmless but he took liberties with the event and ultimately insulted its history. The comic sequences were quite hard to swallow and the film used the gas chambers as a handy location to try and raise the emotion of the fable and make the audiences feel an overwhelming response. As I said however at least Benigni had good intentions but unfortunately the same can not be said for Boll who is well known for promoting himself shamelessly through controversy. The fact that he has sunk this low however shows that he is not only a joke of a filmmaker but also appears to be a joke of a human being too. After all the hard work done by directors such as
Alan Resnais, Claude Lanzmann, Steven Spielberg and
Roman Polanski to help fund school projects and raise awareness of the tragedy, it only takes one idiot like Boll to damage these essential foundations. To trivalise the Holocaust in this manner, an event which is so delicate and impossibly painful to truly imagine and which always have more questions than answers is completely unnacceptable. There are some who still believe that gas chamber footage should have never been relieved and to use to subject to portray the footage for graphic horror value is just in extraordinarily poor taste.
I believe that the Holocaust should be depicted on screen because amazing works of art such as
Night and Fog and
The Pianist have done a tremendously open minded job of revealing an object of knowledge and making sure that we are aware that we are only watching an individual story related to the event. Most importantly they present characters as victims of circumstance which is essential for new generations to understand when coming to study the event. These are the types of films that should be shown in school to help develop ones perspective on a very complicated historical tragedy. What new generations should not have to see however is a trashy director such as Uwe Boll exploiting the horror to raise controversy. We all know that controversy creates cash but for the Holocaust to be given this type of industry treatment is nothing short of despicable. What can such a film accomplish other than to make audiences approach to this event even more small minded and to further make the gas chambers a playground in which directors can freely play around with genre and help distort and cheapen the dark realities of its historical background. Im tired of the now familiar nature of the gas chambers in our culture and the threat of these scenes in such a graphic form will just make the horror appear even more trivial. It shows disrespect to everyone involved. From the barbers who had to hold back the tears as they cut the hair of their friends all the while knowing what their fate happened to be, to the SS officers who lived with and some who still have to live with a wretched guilt for having to go through with something that ninety nine percent of us would have to go through ourselves, to the children who watched their parents die, to the parents who had to watch their children die. There are so many stories, so much pain and most importantly of all so much CIRCUMSTANCE that any form of closed minded or simple minded approach is bound to lead to disaster.
I say to all directors that unless you have an open mind and are willing to show respect to the history of the Holocaust, then stay away from making films about something that is out of your element. Im all for maintaining the visual history of the Holocaust. I am however deadly against the Holocaust becoming an attraction in a Hollywood based theme park.