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The Grey Zone
review by Carrie Gorringe, 21 June 2002
28th Seattle International Film
Festival Tim Blake
Nelson's The Grey Zone depicts the lot of the
sonderkommandos. They were the prisoners who, in exchange for a
few extra months of life and semi-generous rations, agreed to assist
the Nazis in their genocidal aims, "processing" those destined for
the gas chamber, from leading them into the chambers to shoveling
their dead bodies into the ovens (imagine, if you can, the prospect
of separating dead babies from their mothers and throwing them into
the ovens, or even of coming across the bodies of your own
relatives, all for the price of some sausage and generous amount of
liquor in order to dull the pain). The sonderkommandos most
aptly bridged the realm between absolute evil and good evil; hence
the title of the film. Of course, there were countless other
instances of prisoners betraying others in order to save themselves
-- other manifestations of living in a "grey zone" in a world where
the concepts of morality had been rendered utterly relative to the
extreme -- but the situation in which the sonderkommandos
placed themselves could be interpreted as the ne plus ultra
of collaboration with the Nazis.
Working from his own play (based on
a true story), Nelson (who also appears in another SIFF film,
Cherish) crafts a world of moral madness and overwhelming
horror. It is 1944 -- approximately four to six months before the
camp would be liberated by the Russian Army -- and a group of
inmates are conspiring to break out of Auschwitz. Meanwhile, a group
of sonderkommandos, while cleaning up after one of
their routine "details", discovers, much to their amazement, that a
twelve-year-old girl has managed to survive the gassing. The
sonderkommandos, who are in league with the would-be
escapees, find themselves in a moral dilemma: do they attempt the
impossible and try to save her, or do they turn her directly over to
the Nazis? If they don't turn her over, they risk undermining an
escape attempt that had been months in planning, as well as their
own lives and those of others. If they do, they risk the loss of
perhaps their most valuable asset: the psychological block that
keeps from feeling the ramifications of their participation in the
killing machinery.
The overall impression of the film
is one of hit-and-miss achievements. To his credit, Nelson's
depiction of events in the camp and in the gas chambers themselves
is accurate without being graphic; he allows quick editing and
glimpses of the ghastly situation to allow the audience's
imagination to fill in the nightmarish gaps in a way that direct
imagery could not, thus making the impact all the more frightening.
And yet, there's a vague but still certain sense that Nelson doesn't
trust the material enough to convey the omnipresent evil. He allows
the actors to descend into the melodramatic in an attempt to pump up
the sense of terror (with the surprising exception of David Arquette,
whose performance here proves that his range extends far beyond the
realm of horror-film satires). The Grey Zone does leave its
audience numb with shock, but also uneasy about some of the film's
deeper defects. Nevertheless, it is a film that effectively
underscores what should be a rather obvious point: good and evil
don't always possess clear boundaries.
Seattle International Film Festival
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Directed
by:
Tim Blake Nelson
Starring:
David Arquette
Daniel Benzali
Steve Buscemi
Harvey Kietel
Mira Sorvino
Rated:
NR - Not Rated.
This film has not yet
been rated.
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