The Grey Zone | David Arquette, Velizar Binev

The Grey Zone | David Arquette, Velizar Binev | Harrowing tale of absolute horror

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The Grey Zone

	The Grey Zone David Arquette, Velizar Binev Lions Gate, 2003 average customer review:based on 71 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The title of Tim Blake Nelson's harrowing drama of Jewish death camp prisoners who rise up against their captors to "destroy the machinery" refers as much to the compromise and cloudy morality of collaboration as to the gray world coated in the smoke and ash of the crematoriums. Inspired by real-life events at the Auschwitz death camp, The Grey Zone stars David Arquette as a soul-deadened laborer whose being fiercely jolts to life when he finds a young girl alive among the gassed corpses. He's the heart and soul of an outstanding cast that includes Steve Buscemi and Daniel Benzali as revolt leaders, Allan Corduner as the shunned camp doctor, and Harvey Keitel as the commandant. Nelson's rapid pacing, intimate shooting, and terse, jagged dialogue give the moral debate a discomforting immediacy as it races a deadline. When doom hangs in the air, sure death creates unique priorities. --Sean Axmaker

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THE GREY ZONE

The Grey Zone This is simply a excellent movie based on a broadway play i believe.I purchased after seing only part of it on a hotel cable channel one night.I actually purchased it in VHS format which was all that was available.(at that time).I AM HABIRU,so perhaps the movie holds more of a subjective effect on my religious group.But like the movie"Braveheart" it should touch others not personally involved.But like BRAVEHEART it should have the same effect on all decent people who watch it.That is why it is an exellent movie.Strogly Reccomended.Not for the faint of heart.Not atear jerker.Just reality portrayed by the actors. MOST highly reccomended

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Harrowing tale of absolute horror

This is a tale set within the confines of the Auchswitz-Birkenau death camps. It is a tale of the depths that people are capable of sinking to to save a few weeks of life. The men of Sonderkommando 12 work in the selection and clothes changing areas. They lead people to the gas chambers under the pretext of disinfection. When the victims are all dead, they disentangle the corpses and search them for hidden jewelry--they cut the hair and they pull out the teeth. Afterwards, they work in the living Hell of the crematoria, incinerating bodies that are at least partly their personal victims.

There is a plot to destroy the crematoria coupled with a major prison break. Arms are smuggled in from Polish partisans. The Germans, who have informants everywhere, quickly learn of the plot but don't know how, where or what. Three women from a work detail in a munitions factory are discovered with powder--illicit explosives. They are ruthlessly tortured with electric shock but don't break. They are afterall going to die anyway. They have second thoughts, however, when the Nazis line up the women in their section and shoot them down, all the while asking the million dollar question. Half are murdered but no one talks.

The plot is almost foiled, howeve, when a prisoner discovers a still living girl under a pile of gassed people. He convinces others, including the camp doctor, to assist in her resuscitation and hiding. Trying to hide the girl places the whole operation at risk. The Commandant discovers her and, in exchange for her life, tries to bribe his brilliant Jewish doctor for more information about the plot. The doctor denies everything except, to say, that there is a plot. The Commandant isn't pleased.

The plot goes forward. Arms are seized and the main crematorium goes up in a series of explosions. Efforts to hold off the trained soldiers, brought in to repel the rebellion are largely hopeless. Many are killed outright and those who survive are systematically shot in the head. The young girl, who has survived so much, is shot down by the Commandant.

This is a powerful, grim and gruesome story of one of the greatest wrongs in history--the systematic demolition of a people. It asks the very pertinent question: How far would you go to save your own life? Are you above collaboration and murder?

Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of America

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The Grey Zone

This movie is very moving, it is slow at times, but the story is amazing and hard to believe that people would be treated like that. It is totally worth buying because you will want to watch it again. Each time I watch it I see something new, not only that,but is a good historical movie to show youth about WW2. My lil bro and his friends couldn't believe that this is what happened to Jews during WW2. It is definetly a good movie.

A powerful, but very disturbing movie

This is not a horror movie, but it is a movie of real horror. It is about the horrors of Auschwitz, what it took to run that place, what some were forced to do to stay alive for a bit longer, and what bravery some showed in trying to stop the horror even for a few hours or a few days. It is not for the squeamish, those who are afraid to see piles of naked bodies being stuffed into ovens, or hearing the screams of the dying as they were being gassed. Then there are the conversations among the living about staying alive, being dead, what they should or shouldn't do, and the Nazi's torturing prisoners to get information they think they need.

There was indeed a prisoner riot at Auschwitz, but not every detail in this movie is historically accurate. However, there are no exaggerations of the horror and monstrous acts. In fact, they are probably still understated. The acting in the movie is very good, but beware before you watch it. Seriously, this movie could traumatize someone not prepared for what they are going to see in this harsh movie.

It is not all bleak, however, there is tremendous power in the scenes involving the preparations and smuggling of material to prepare for the sabotage and riot. There is also the girl whom the prisoners try to hide and revive because she survived the gas. Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, played wonderfully by Allan Corduner, is based on a real life person of the same name who was forced into doing autopsies on twins for Josef Mengele in order to try and protect his own wife and child. His moral dilemma is among the most crushing in the movie. Steve Buscemi's role as Hesch Abramowics is also very memorable. He is a complete cynic, or is he? You have to decide. Asking yourself what you would do in the horror of Auschwitz is part of the movie. It is easy to say you would refuse, but dying just for yourself isn't the issue, you have a spouse, and probably children. Do you just walk with them into the poison gas and or shove their bodies into the ovens?

Really, a very powerful and powerfully disturbing movie. For the right people, this is very much worth seeing and thinking about. Be beware before you watch it. You will be disturbed by it.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

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Painful to Watch True Story

One of the hardest things to understand about the Shoah was how so many people "just walked" into the gas chambers. Harder still is to understand why people chose to help out the Germans. When you watch how the people coming off the trains were treated, you ask yourself why didn't they rebel. Well part of the reason was that they were told by their own that they were going in for showers. Why would you fight against that?

What if there were no SonderKommandos? Would the Germans not have hired other people (Poles and Balts) who would have been happy to do the work just like they did in the Eastern Camps? Would these 'others' have treated those going to the 'chambers' any better or worse? If you were there, what would you do to stay alive, even if for only four more months?

What doesn't show is the years of humiliation, like a woman who have suffered years of abuse by her husband. That is what these people were like when they came into the Jagers. They had first been stripped of all their rights and then spent years in forced ghettos living like convicts.

One thing that was missing from the movie is the condition of the people when they go out of the 'cars'. Most had been in them at least for forty -eight hours, with no food or water and one bucket for urine and feces. There may have been up to 120 people in a car that could fit maybe sixty. Many were forced to stand for the whole trip. Some would have died enroute and there was no way to get rid of the bodies. When the cars were opened the people inside were so traumatized that they were like robots. Some had even gone insane while locked up and the rest would have had to endure their screaming and ranting during the trip.

It's hard to imaging what these people endured before they were gassed. In many cases, as they left the cars, anyone who complained were shot on the spot. These were normal, law abiding people, how would you reach if someone shot the person next to you in the head, and their brains and blood were splattered all over you, having endured 48 hours or more stuffed in a cattle car?

This may seem raw, but was mild compared to the actual camps. The one part that was close was when they were shooting the woman, to get the other two woman to confess. The German in charge, took no notice of the screaming of the woman about to be shot or that they were not involved. To them all Jews were 'untermenschen' (underpeople) who would all be killed eventually. So did it matter if we did it now or later?

Zeb Kantrowitz

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