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The Grey Zone [2001] (REGION 1) (NTSC)


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Some reservations...
Review date: 2008-03-10 Rating: 6 out of 10

Quote: "Too much was left to imagination for the viewer, it would have been better to have seen the panic of the people in the showers along with their screams, to have seen how or with what implement Sorvino was being tortured when being interrogated. These things let the film down."

I find comments in reviews like this quite disturbing. However, I believe this is what sets historians like myself apart from people who merely enjoy mindless graphic violence in films. I would argue that the better films on the Holocaust leave "more" to the imagination as it is slightly presumptuous to try to accurately recreate specific parts of the killing process which we know very little about. Despite this film being based on an eye witness account of a member of the Sonderkommando; as filming was strictly forbidden inside the gas chambers there is no existing evidence that shows us what people actually experienced in the final moments of their lives before they fell victim to Zyklon B. Therefore, I actually thought that the film did well to represent what would have been seen and heard by the Sonderkommando due to fact that they would not actually have seen the moment of death with their own eyes but rather, as the film shows, hearing the terrible screams and forming their own personal images of what was happening inside the chamber, that is before having to clean up in the aftermath of the killings.

As for the film itself, I thought the script was pretty poor at times and felt the violence often unnecessarily frequent and bloody (as I did with Schindler's List etc). However, the film is definitely worth watching as an interesting contribution to post-war cinematic interpretations of the Holocaust. For a slightly different approach to representation however I would strongly recommend watching Claude Lanzmen's documentary film "Shoah" which is a far superior film that doesn't have to resort to Hollywood style shock-horror tactics.


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Reviews


Nothing to write home about?
Review date: 2008-01-10 Rating: 2 out of 10

Some parts of this film were really excellent and other parts were so bad, so amateurish that it really was difficult to believe that they were one and the same DVD.The bunks in the blocks were so pristine clean and the prisoners were so clean themselves they looked as if they could appear in a washing powder or soap advert on TV. The fact that in reality EVERYONE had lice,bedbugs,and all manner of infestations in the actual living quarters as well as themselves and were ALL suffering from SEVERE MALNUTRTION,dysentry,typhoid etc was in no way evident in any of the scenes in this film, in fact the inhabitants of THIS Auschwitz looked more like they were AT Butlins?
There was good acting I thought from Mira Sorvino and her compatriot especially when the remainder of the internees were being shot as they were being questioned re the whereabouts of the gunpowder and their final sacrifice was very moving.David Arquette was value for money but I think Harvey Keitel should call it a day on this performance and my acting honours would go to young Kamelia Grigorova, the girl found to have survived the gas chamber.Too much was left to imagination for the viewer, it would have been better to have seen the panic of the people in the showers along with their screams,to have seen how or with what implement Sorvino was being tortured when being interrogated. These things let the film down.

A worthy failure, but a failure nonetheless
Review date: 2007-11-09 Rating: 4 out of 10

The Grey Zone is another well-intentioned failure to add to the canon of Holocaust cinema. On one level you feel bad for criticizing a sincere effort, but on the other when a film with this subject matter (the revolt of the Jewish and Polish Sonderkomandos who ran the crematoriums in Auschwitz in return for a few more months of life) doesn't actually make you FEEL, there's definitely something wrong with it. A few of the performances (Steve Buscemi, Daniel Benzali, David Arquette) are excellent, but far too many are inadequate (especially Alan Corduner in a key role) or just plain bad (Harvey Keitel and Bryan O'Byrne's unfortunately comic book Nazis). The dialogue in director Tim Blake Nelson's script, based on his play, is extremely problematic, to put it mildly. Aiming for evasiveness, it often just sounds like bad Beckett or Pinter ("But -", "Of course." "Although - " "I know" "Then..."), with one line often seemingly unrelated to another and badly staged inadvertent momentary pauses where it should have overlapped. But the biggest problem is it's failure to offer much substance or, until the last half hour, much drama. The last 20 minutes do become involving and the ending is genuinely haunting, but the film seems seriously under-developed. The camerawork and editing are superb, however, never overdoing the hand-held camera but conveying a sense of place and atmosphere: without going out of its way to over-explain anything, you get a feeling that these people are in this place trying to survive another day rather than in a movie.

Hard hitting
Review date: 2007-03-30 Rating: 6 out of 10

I have a keen interest in the Jewish Holocaust and was fascinated by films like Schindler's List,The Pianist,Holocaust and Fateless amonst others but in The Grey Zone we probably have the most hard hitting of them all.
Auschwitz Birkenau is the concentration camp in question and many aspects of life in the camp is covered in great detail from the gas chambers,the ovens,Dr.Mengele's experiments,the living conditions of the prisoners and much more that i have not seen covered in such detail in any other film.
Certainly not for the faint hearted and filmed with so much realism that it is hard to know whether you should be 'enjoying' it or not.


Very well made film
Review date: 2004-08-07 Rating: 10 out of 10

To say the least, this film shows you what really happened. At times you think to yourself How? Why? If you like this kind of story in a film, it is the best ever made.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
David Arquette
Michael Stuhlbarg
George Zlatarev
David Chandler
Velizar Binev

Creators:
David Arquette (Primary Contributor)
Velizar Binev (Primary Contributor)
Tim Blake Nelson (Writer)
Avi Lerner (Producer)
Brad Weston (Producer)
Christine Vachon (Producer)
Danny Dimbort (Producer)
Danny Lerner (Producer)
Miklos Nyiszli (Writer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Lions Gate
Manufacturer: Lions Gate
EAN: 9781588177056
Binding: DVD
ISBN: 158817705X
Number of items: 1
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Colour, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC,
Release date: 2003-03-18
Universal product code (UPC): 031398823827
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Region code: 1
Running time: 108 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2001
Language: English (Original Language)

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