“Blaming the Victim: The Movie.” Seriously, one of the most depressing things Ive seen in a while. Nelson attempts the impossible, to film the moral universe inside concentration camps. His setting, the 12th Sonderkommando of Auschwitz, who staged a somewhat-successful uprising, is fascinating and disturbing. (Why he didnt pick the slightly-more successful uprising at Treblinka is curious.) Anyway, I dont think all the notes are hit correctly here, and if you come to this movie with little knowledge of how concentration camps operated this movie may be lost on you. Still, just when I think I am ready to ask for a moratorium on Holocaust films, along comes this film or “The Pianist” to rework the genre if you can call it a genre. Im not able to put my finger exactly what cinematic techniques make “The Grey Zone” so sharp (short of letting the actors speak with American accents) but theres something. Certainly seeing a character named Hoffman hailing from Budapest working and dying at Auschwitz pretty much all I know about many members of my fathers fathers side of the family — added a layer of personal intensity I could have done without.
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Welcome
Jordan Hoffman is a New York-based writer and film critic working for The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Thrillist, Times of Israel, NY Daily News and elsewhere.
He is the host of ENGAGE: The Official Star Trek Podcast, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and challenges you to a game of backgammon.