Shoah (1985)

[McCrutchy]

Shoah Blu-ray PRE-ORDER

Over a decade in the making, Claude Lanzmann's nine-hour-plus opus is a monumental investigation of the unthinkable: the murder of more than six million Jews by the Nazis. Using no archival footage, Lanzmann instead focuses on first-person testimonies (of survivors and former Nazis, as well as other witnesses), employing a circular, free-associative method in assembling them. The intellectual yet emotionally overwhelming Shoah is not a film about excavating the past but an intensive portrait of the ways in which the past is always present, and it is inarguably one of the most important cinematic works of all time.

Special Features:
New high-definition digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Three additional films by director Claude Lanzmann: A Visitor from the Living (1999, 68 minutes), Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. (2001, 102 minutes), and The Karski Report (2010, 54 minutes)
New conversation between critic Serge Toubiana and Lanzmann
Interview with Lanzmann about A Visitor from the Living and Sobibor
New conversation between associate director of photography Caroline Champetier and filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kent Jones and writings by Lanzmann

[A Tortured Duckling]

Wow, this is great news. I never got around to buying the DVD, so i will definitely jump on this release.

[Jr7936]

this is the best criterion annoucement in a while, i think since on the waterfront

[Crimson King]

sounds like an interesting doc, but VERY depressing (and a 9 hr running time)

[Oscar Rothman]

So stoked for the blu-ray of Shoa! A powerful and evocative masterpiece of commemorative culture!

[spf781]

Wow. Awesome news. Amazing work of cinema.

[Abdrewes]

One of my top anticipated CC releases now.

[jah13]

Originally Posted by Crimson King

sounds like an interesting doc, but VERY depressing (and a 9 hr running time)

Yes, it's long, but this is a transcendant piece of cinema. A must-see, and it really makes almost everything else on the subject, in terms of cinema, somewhat redundant. Best, if viewed in as close to one sitting as one can manage.

[Snicket]

That MSRP....

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by Snicket

That MSRP....

Getting if for 40 something after BN50, member discount and possible coupons will be a great deal though.

[ultlife2013]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

Getting if for 40 something after BN50, member discount and possible coupons will be a great deal though.

That deal is the kind I want to take behind the 7-eleven and you know what.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by ultlife2013

That deal is the kind I want to take behind the 7-eleven and you know what.

...well even if I just get the flat 50% ill be happy. Better star beefing up my savings.

[Kalekulan]

I haven't heard of this before. Watched the first 10min on Youtube(profanity, I know) and it seems fantastic. When is the B&N Criterion sales? Was it two times a year? When is the next?

[jah13]

Originally Posted by Snicket

That MSRP....

Each Era is between 4 and 5 hours and each is often treated as a separate film, not to mention there are 3 other shorter films included, so the price isn't very surprising, but as has already been said, with the B & N sale, it'll be $40 or less.

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by jah13

Each Era is between 4 and 5 hours and each is often treated as a separate film, not to mention there are 3 other shorter films included, so the price isn't very surprising, but as has already been said, with the B & N sale, it'll be $40 or less.

It'll be $49.99, which may be reduced further if you're a member and/or have coupons available.

[jah13]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

It'll be $49.99, which may be reduced further if you're a member and/or have coupons available.

Ah, yes, I looked at Criterion's already-reduced price instead of the MSRP. In any event, it's not exorbitant considering the wealth of material you're getting with this release. A 550-minute film, which is a masterpiece, along with 3 separate, complete works by the same filmmaker. Something of an unmarked box set.

[Tybo28]

Ill definitely be getting this. Such an important film. Hope it goes down from $70.00, though. It helps ease the disappointment of another month with no Grey Gardens announcement.

[theogeek_nola]

Preordered. I sincerely hope it goes down, but I'm ecstatic either way.

[unclemat]

Originally Posted by spf781

Wow. Awesome news. Amazing work of cinema.

Meh, it's a garbage, not amazing work of cinema. Manipulative pseudo-documentary with overt anti-Polish bias. Wikipedia article is pretty spot-on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah_(film)

Lanzmann's purpose in making the film is revealed by his comments that he "fears" Poland and that the death camps could not possibly have been constructed in France because the "French peasantry would not have tolerated them." He has admitted he intended to indict the Poles in Shoah and has made no films about the Holocaust in France where, presumably, anti-Jewish sentiments are not to be found. The observation of Eva Hoffman, a Polish Jew, that anti-semitism was neither fundamental to Polish culture nor "exceptional" in its virulence is utterly lost on Lanzmann. Not surprisingly, many Poles bitterly condemned the film as tendentious and manipulative, including Jan Karski and Jerzy Turowicz.
— Robert D. Cherry; Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, Rethinking Poles and Jews [11]

This is such a bullshit, considering it was French who actively worked with Germans to kill their Jews. Penalty for helping Jews in the occupied Poland was immediate death to the entire family, and often the village. Yet it was ethnic Poles who saved the highest numbers of their Jewish countrymen.

Last but not least, about the same number of ethnic Polish (and other non-Jewish Poles) were killed by Germans as they were Polish Jews. Not something Lazmann would consider noteworthy.

[unclemat]

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog...oah-revisited/

The traditional objection to this portrayal of Jews’ Polish neighbors is that Lanzmann should have included conversations with Polish rescuers or with Polish Jews who survived the war and remained in Poland. But Lanzmann wanted to make an important point about the continuity of Christian anti-Semitism after and despite the Holocaust, and he makes it well: fair enough. There is an undeniable moral and aesthetic power to the scenes in which Polish peasants reveal their anti-Semitic understanding of the world in their very descriptions of the Holocaust: as a catastrophe brought down on Jews by the Jews themselves. But how does Lanzmann direct this power? He flatters us with it, unmistakably separating the western allies from a barbarous Polish countryside where such things as death facilities could be erected (Lanzmann has denied that such a thing could happen in France). It would perhaps be hard, today, for a French intellectual to make such a film about the Holocaust without mentioning, for example, the notorious roundup of Paris Jews by French policemen at the Vel d’Hiv in 1942.

Lanzmann does speak with one Pole, the famous wartime courier Jan Karski, who figures as a civilized man of the West. In 1942, Karski slipped into the Warsaw ghetto, spoke to Jews, and came to understand the Holocaust. But Lanzmann does not have Karski discuss what happened next. Karski left the ghetto, made his way (no small undertaking) to London and Washington, and told leaders about the Holocaust. There was no meaningful reaction, in part because almost no one, in those anti-Semitic times, was interested in fighting a war for the Jews, or in being seen to do so. Karski is in the film to introduce the Warsaw ghetto, but his mission from its Jews to describe their fate to the West is left out. If Lanzmann had included it, we might then have to see our countries, in some limited but nevertheless significant measure, as among the bystanders. When we identify with victims, we believe we see ourselves, but perhaps we are simply looking away.