"The Grey Zone" 10/18

[John]

The true story of Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, a Hungarian Jew chosen by Josef Mengele to be the head pathologist at Auschwitz. Nyiszli was one of Auschwitz's Sonderkommandos - "Special Squads" of Jewish prisoners placed by the Nazis in the excruciating moral dilemma of helping to exterminate fellow Jews in exchange for a few more months of life. Together, the Sonderkommandos struggled to organize the only armed revolt that would ever take place at Auschwitz. As the rebellion is about to commence, a group from the unit discovers a 14-year-old girl who has miraculously survived a gassing. A catalyst for their desperate attempt at personal redemption, the men become obsessed with saving this one child, even if doing so endangers the uprising which could save thousands. To what terrible lengths are we willing to go to save our own lives, and what in turn would we sacrifice to save the lives of others?

Rated R, 108 minutes


David Arquette - Hoffman
Allan Corduner - Doctor Nyiszli
Steve Buscemi - Abramowics
Harvey Keitel - Muhsfeldt
Mira Sorvino - Dina
Natasha Lyonne - Rosa
Daniel Benzali - Schlermer
David Chandler - Rosenthal

[John]

I'm impressed with the cast on this one, and would never have pictured David Arquette in a movie as serious as this.

[sher]

can't go wrong with steve buscemi and harvey keitel imo.

[Feifer]

Man, this sounds like it is going to be a great movie...I sure hope it is not a letdown.

[ClaraBella]

I, too, saw this movie on the list of "coming soon to a theater near you" and am looking forward to seeing this movie. I have a great interest in the holocaust and have read some very good books written by survivors. I worked in a firm with a holocaust survivor and his story about jumping off the train and finding his father in the getto and then escaping to the woods where he had to survive on stolen loaves of bread, moved me.

[John]

CB, if you see it, post here what you thought of it, ok?

I think it's just going to be too depressing for me to see in a theater.

[cali]

This will definitely be one I see on DVD... not because I don't think it would be worth it to see in theaters, but because I agree with John and think it would be too depressing.
It sounds absolutely terrific though.... could you imagine the moral dillema? It tugs at my heart just to read the snippet above.

[John]

From The Washington Post:

Tim Blake Nelson's "The Grey Zone" strikes a bold, even courageous blow against the pious cliches of most Holocaust films. Jagged, unrelenting, claustrophobically intimate, it does more than any other in recent memory to avoid the platitudes and cheap sentimentality that, on film anyway, have come to represent the murder of 12 million people by the Nazis during World War II. If "The Grey Zone" ultimately succumbs to some of those cliches, it's due more to the exigencies of moviemaking than to Nelson's own admirable instincts as a director.

The rest of the article can be read there.

[ClaraBella]

John, I read a book several years ago written by a camp survivor and he spoke alot about these "chosen" to turn their fellow Jews in to the Nazi's. It is a great moral dilemma because from what I read, they had to chose between life for their families in exchange for turning in friends and neighbors over the deaths of their families for not cooperating. The entire holocaust must have been horrific for these people and unimaginable and unspeakable horrors that they had to live through. I also said that I had worked in a law firm several years ago with a survivor. He told me that when he was 9 years old they put his family on a train bound for one of the Polish concentration camps and he lept from the moving train and ran into the woods. He hid in the woods and made his way back to the ghetto where he hid in the underground sewer system for a while. He was reunited with his father, who lept from the train after him and they both ended up living in the woods, begging from house to house for a stale loaf of bread to survive on. His mother and his sisters and brothers stayed on the train and were immediately sent to the gas chambers. To this day, he brings in loaves of fresh French bread every Friday to the office and gives them out to the secretary pool as a rememberance of those days.

[fluff]

I want to see this but I know I will find it very painful.

The cast is incredible.