FILM GUTTER ENTERS THE OCTO-BOLL:​ AUSCHWITZ (2011)

Dir. Uwe Boll, Canada/Germany, 73 mins

Well, it's time to draw Octo-Boll to a close, and we'll be continuing on in the same cheerful vein of last week's Seed with our concluding entry. It takes a brave director to tackle a subject like Auschwitz, but there's no doubting that Uwe Boll is a director who doesn't lack for bravery. It certainly taps into the common political thread in many of Boll's movies – the Rampage trilogy is loaded with social commentary brought to us through the mouth of Bill Williamson, and Attack on Darfur and Assault on Wall Street carry an equal weight on that front. But what sort of power does Auschwitz hold as a movie in its own right?


We begin – and indeed close – with a small statement from Boll, in both German and English, talking about why he wanted to make this particular movie. Again the interest and passion for politics and the state of the world is very much apparent here, and the intent there is doubtless to ensure that people don't forget the impact of the awful events that took place in Auschwitz or indeed ignore some of the atrocities being committed around the world right now.

The film itself is comprised of two separate segments – there are a handful of interviews with schoolchildren about the events of Auschwitz, which are interesting in their own right. As someone in their mid-thirties it's sometimes easy to lose touch of what the newer generation thinks of things and what understanding they have of events that we often take for granted. However it feels to me like there are a few too many of these, and I think I could have lived with more of the main thread of the movie set within Auschwitz.
 
It's immediately apparent from Boll's intro that there's not going to be any heroics or Hollywood makeovers to events here – the presentation of in Auschwitz is very frank and very unadorned, and doesn't really follow much of a narrative structure. In fact it's almost documentary style and is basically a sort of 'day in the life' of the concentration camp. It's likely not as visually grotesque as it could have been, but it certainly packs a punch in the emotional stakes, with slews of Jewish prisoners arriving only to be stripped naked and pushed into the gas chambers – all shown pretty unflinchingly – including elderly people and children among the victims. There's also some unpleasant scenes later on as we start to see the bodies being burned in ovens. On top of that, there's also a smattering of footage from the time, which certainly hasn't lost any of its emotional impact all these years on.
 
Auschwitz certainly is a movie that gets its point across in a host of different ways, and it's likely a benefit that it has a slightly shorter runtime because it's simply not about narrative drive. If it were too long, that lack of arcs and character journeys would be a serious problem, but the actual filmed 'mockumentary' element runs less than an hour and doesn't suffer much from offering almost a vignette approach. It's bald and unfurnished, and doesn't aim to do anything more than drive home the absolute horrors of what happened at Auschwitz. In that sense it's perfectly effective, and draws a strong comparison with Attack on Darfur, although that one has rather more of a recognisable three-act structure than this one. It's almost better not to approach this one as a film and more like a dramatised documentary, and taken in that context it does a good job.

RATING: 6.5/10. Another very solid Boll offering, with a heartfelt introduction and conclusion from the director himself, some interesting insight in terms of the knowledge and beliefs of the younger generation and a decently delivered documentary-style segment that doesn't shy from some of the terrible incidents of the time. With all that said, I do feel as though it is slightly limited by not really taking on a proper story set within that place and time period, and as such it doesn't maybe have the impact it could have if we knew the characters really well. So it's a very respectable 6.5/10 for this one to close off Octo-Boll.