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To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric
Theodor Adorno
It has always been the common consensus that Documentary is more real, believable, and ethical than fiction films, because of it’s apparent effort to display raw truth, rather than fiction film’s melodramatic efforts to direct the viewers emotions. As Yosefa Loshitsky writes, “Traditionally, documentaries have been viewed as superior to fiction films because of their pretence to monopolize the market of truth” . ... Documentarists can distort the truth just as much as fiction, documentarists can often use unethical methods to convey their message. ... She goes on to say “that Night and Fog, and Shoah tower above other films about the Holocaust because of an intimacy with (and commitment to) the cinematic medium as well as the historical facts. ... Spielberg’s film does include manipulative music and other Hollywood based aesthetics, but one could argue that it also has a rich and original structure, Yosefa Loshitsky writes “it is a visually spectacular and eclectic text, quoting from styles as diverse as film noir, German Expressionism, Italian Neoralism, World War II newsreels and CNN news coverage” Spielberg manages to blend these together almost seamlessly, however this doesn’t make his film any more ethical in its representation of the Holocaust. ... His reason for doing this is to inform so many more people of the terror and atrocity that these people felt and underwent, but I feel that disturbing the survivors even more, by dredging up memories from the past which they have suppressed, to inform us of what they witnessed, is wrong, when plenty of other methods have worked just aswell to inform us of the atrocities of the Holocaust. ... The scene takes place in an Israeli barber shop that Lanzmann hired out, so in a sense its similar to a fiction film, in that it is not a truthful situation. ... Whether or not the film is more or less ethical in its representation of the Holocaust than Shoah, the most important point is that the message must reach as many people in the world as possible, to make sure the Shoah, and the dead are not forgotten, and to make sure nothing remotely similar can ever happen again. ...
Spielberg has made a film which has disregarded all the past taboos on the representation of the holocaust, based around the Bilderverbot, he has succeded in creating a film with a new, more modern approach to the Holocaust, which implies the Holocaust’s full acceptance into American culture. ... His reference back to the present day, and placing the real life jews next to their film counterparts, as they place rocks on Oskar Schindler’s grave is a particularly ethical ending, he acknowledges that there is no fitting ending to a fictional reproduction of the Holocaust, and shows that there is never an end to the trauma the Holocaust has created, he leaves it as an open wound, which was always what critics wanted. ... ) “new discourse” on the Holocaust”
The limits of representation don’t seem to be as important anymore, now that films like Schindler’s List and La vita e bella have broken through these boundaries. ...
“Shoah is not like Nuit et broillard, which offers an at times uncomfortably aestheticised representation of the Holocaust with its juxtaposition of black and white archive and colour, it’s use of Cayrol’s poetic voice-over and Eisner’s contrapuntal music.
Approximate Word count = 2658
Approximate Pages = 10.6
(250 words per page double spaced)
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