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I usually stray from American made WWII films because they're just patriotic, action-packed dribble that often lack character development and displaying the war in a way that feels immersive and palpable. When I went to see Sobibor at the Jewish Film Festival, I was hoping for something with substance, something educational about a rarely talked about camp, something with enlightening characters that would challenge my own perspective... but what I got was just the opposite.
Brutality for shock factor: I'm all for having an honest display of the brutality of history, however, there is a level of respect that it has to be treated with which can be achieved through artistic direction. Take a film like the Zookeeper's Wife, for example, where some of the most heinous crimes are tackled, and showed to some degree. The scenes in that film didn't shy from showing the audience what happened, yet they didn't show it in vulgar detail, nor linger on the vulgarity of the crime. Rather, they chose the aftermath of the brisk, violent scenes, to develop the emotions between the audience and characters on the screen. Not so for Sobibor. The scenes depicting gassing, beatings, and humiliation dragged oooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnn for a PAINFUL amount of time to the point where I was squirming in my chair, and couldn't even bear to look at some points.
The scene where the women are rounded up to be killed, a process anyone who's even seen a single holocaust film or HEARD about the holocaust is familiar with, yet they show every part of it. They focus on a young woman as she's shaved, gripping clumps of her falling hair over her exposed breast, following her and the other naked lot into the chamber, where we watch them for an exorbitant amount of time, only to be gassed. And we watch every minute of that too, focusing on that woman vomiting before expiring in a pile of naked bodies-- We get it. All of this was shown, taking up a good amount of screen time, and for what? It didn't develop any characters, set a mood, or create a setting, since women aren't the focus in any other part of the film. This was just one of MANY examples throughout the film like it. They dragged on to the point that I no longer felt like this was even just cinematic-shock value, but I felt quite uncomfortable, as if I had stumbled upon the director's secret porn stash, or found some fetish videos on his computer. :-/ What I mean to say is this: the brutality displayed in the film lacked artistic quality, any scrap of unique perspective or storytelling creativity, or any real value to the characters or story of the film. They felt like they were instead, to be enjoyed by a sick audience who comes to see holocaust films to revel in the suffering of the characters on screen....
Onto other gripes I had.
Historic Representation: I'm no history buff, but I have read and watched a lot of WWII content, and found it rather shocking to see women with their hair unshorn, in their fine clothes that they brought with them, hanging out with the men so casually throughout the film. Wives just being able to talk with their husbands, women just walking around the camp without question. I'm to assume Sobibor was different from the rest of the camps? If it was, I would have loved to have -learned- something through this film as to why or how things were ran, not in an expository way, but some sort of subtle hints. I just found it jarring to have these jump cuts to scenes of man and wife just having a chit-chat while others are working about the camp. I left feeling more confused about what I thought I knew about how the camps were run, than having learned anything about it.
Character development: These characters were hard to form an emotional tie with. It's not for their lack of acting, but rather the way the scenes were shot and the dialogue that was written for them. Any chances they had at forming a serious bonding moment between character and audience were dashed by corny cliche dialogue that felt very breaking-the-4th-wall at times.
Overall, I was left feeling like I watched something I didn't need to see. I garnered no new historic information, nor did I feel my thoughts were provoked in any poignant way.
score 2/10
thirdpotato 12 February 2019
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4642957/ |
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22-11-2020 11:26:07