MEMORIAL DAY FOR HOLOCAUST VICTIMS: «Shoah» is the movie that skinned our illusions
Photo source: theguardian.com
Claude Lanzmann is an iconic person for the world culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. Intellectual, journalist, writer, philosopher, director.
He was a cult figure in the European cultural community. A close friend of Jean-Paul Sartre. His incredible romance with Simone de Beauvoir lasted for seven long years and in itself is worthy of a separate screen adaptation. But first of all, Lanzmann is known as the director of the famous film epic about the Holocaust — «Shoah».
The movie was released back in 1985 and became a real world sensation.
Unfortunately, it is still virtually unknown in our country, although it is hardly possible to talk about modern world cinema and culture without it.
Almanac Huxley decided to fill this unfortunate gap.
ART AFTER AUSCHWITZ
Theodor Adorno, a German philosopher and sociologist of culture, was the first to speak about this problem. «Writing poetry after Auschwitz — is barbaric, it also undermines the understanding of why it is impossible to write poetry today», he said in his work «Cultural Criticism and Society» in 1951. This thesis became a kind of watershed in postwar cultural philosophy.
The apotheosis of dehumanization, which Europe faced in the Holocaust, questioned the entire «human substance» of civilization: notions of good and evil, morality and law, state and society, ideology and culture… How to relate the terrible experience of dehumanization with the usual artistic practice?
Cinema was born in Europe, which entrusted it to realize its old illusions and dreams. Less than half a century later, the same Europe gave birth to the Holocaust, which left no stone unturned in the illusion of people and humanity.
It became the «yardstick» of all following fantasies, social experiments, cultural trends, and political aspirations.
Does art have the right to ignore the Holocaust? And if not, how should it talk about it? In fact, it will be up to the «most important of all arts» to speak about the terrible experience of dehumanization, which itself is largely responsible for this dehumanization. So, can cinema remain the same after Auschwitz?
Adorno reminds us that Kierkegaard once built his critique of the aesthetic around the thesis that intellectuals and artists are not equal partners in existence and that they create from a position of «non-participation in existence». In the case of the Holocaust, such aesthetic «detachment» is unthinkable!
Claude Lanzmann recalled how the idea of making a movie about the Holocaust came about:
«One Israeli asked me if I could make a picture that would not be about the Holocaust but would itself be a kind of Holocaust.
I walked around Paris for a whole night, thinking about the idea. In the end, I agreed, not yet realizing that I was taking on an impossible task, getting involved in an impossible adventure, very dangerous, costing me twelve years of my life in the end».
To tell the story of the Holocaust, Lanzmann required a very different aesthetic.
LANZMANN’S REVOLUTION
Narration — without it, no movie or literary storytelling is possible. But in the case of the Holocaust, it prevents us from understanding the magnitude of the catastrophe that has happened to humanity. Because this catastrophe is not reducible to any single story, even the most emotionally powerful of them.
In general, much of what concerns the Holocaust is beyond the capacity of human consciousness. For example, no matter how horrific the statistics are given in documentaries, our brains are still unable to adequately comprehend the truth behind these numbers.
Therefore, in the movie «Shoah», Lanzman refuses all the usual attributes of the genre — plot, statistical data, maps, archival photos, and video — everything that takes away from the terrible essence. His picture lasts 9 hours, far exceeding the duration of a regular movie.

In the same way, the Holocaust exceeds the limits of our understanding and time, being an enduring event in human history. The Holocaust is not something that once happened between Jews and Germans, it is something that continues to happen to all of us right now.
Lanzmann deliberately prefaces the movie with the words, «The action begins in our days». Because «our days» are both 1985 (the year the movie was released) and 1942 and any day when the viewer of the film crosses the invisible line of time.
The catastrophe is witnessed by people just like us. The viewer is face-to-face with them, becoming, together with the author of the movie, an accomplice in the 9-hour «interrogation with passion» of the victims and executioners.
For 9 hours, they all exist on the edge of existence and non-existence.
«There are no survivors in this movie», Lanzmann admitted, «and I myself do not call them “survivors”, but rather “people who have returned from the other side of the world, ghosts”».
Not only the interviewed «ghosts» are full participants in the picture, but also those who are not in the picture — they were cut out of existence by the Holocaust.
The «presence» of some in the world of the living is the reason for the «absence» of others in it. People who have returned from the other world have to speak not only about the dead but FOR them.
THE BANALITY OF EVIL
«Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil» is the title of a book written by philosopher Hannah Arendt, who witnessed the trial of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, which took place in Israel in 1961. Arendt’s book collects many pieces of evidence and examples of people’s reactions to the Holocaust.
Trying to understand the causes of the tragedy, Arendt divides people on a completely different principle. Not into executioners and victims, but into those who are able to think critically and those who are not. She finds nothing extraordinary or pathological in Eichmann.
He is an ordinary, banal common man who «did his duty», «obeyed orders», and «just did his job» — this is how Eichmann interpreted his crimes: he did not realize that they were crimes, had no hatred for Jews, and trivially followed the laws established by the government.
«The Banality of Evil», according to Arendt, are the actions of the average person who does not know what he is doing. Critical thinking presupposes responsibility. But the average person who «just lives» is incapable of it, shifting responsibility to the state, the party, and the Führer, who think for them.
Many Jews did not understand or accept this position. In Israel, Arendt and her books were boycotted for about 30 years. Lanzmann, who was famous for his intractable and unyielding character, was also unwilling to accept Arendt’s theory of the «banality of evil». He believed that evil had no right to hide behind the mask of banality.
Lanzmann himself, however, was more a proof of the rightness of how critical «non-banalistic» thinking can confront death and evil.
His films are the aesthetic response of such thinking to the incomprehensible, which is, in fact, the Holocaust.
They are driven by a sense of what Jean-Paul Sartre, a close friend of Claude Lanzmann, would label as «engagement», where critical thinking and aesthetics are not peeled away from the ethical.
Otherwise, we get aesthetically flawless and innovative Leni Riefenstahl’s «Triumph of the Will», which turns into a triumph of evil. Although Riefenstahl herself, by analogy with Eichmann, believed that she was «just doing her job» as a director.
The «banality of evil» can also be approached from another angle. In one of the film’s interviews, a Nazi from Treblinka describes with almost hidden irony the behavior of Jewish women shortly before the gas chamber.
He talks about things that are beyond comprehension, as if they were something ordinary. He is not driven to despair by Heidegger’s Sein zum Tode («existence to death»). Because for him it is not existential at all, but banal everyday life.
CULTURE AND DEATH
The film «Shoah» does not shout about tragedy, does not dialog with executioners and victims, does not inform, and does not convince. It witnesses. With seemingly «simple» techniques, Lanzmann makes a kind of cinematic revolution. He gives his answer to the question of what cinema can be after Auschwitz.
«I talked to many Holocaust survivors… But something was missing, I didn’t immediately realize what it was. Gradually, I began to understand. Everyone I talked to was alive, they were — survivors. The dead were not there. I finally realized that the main theme of the film should be death», said Lanzmann.
Perhaps for the first time in history, Europe was confronted with death in its «pure form», purged of cultural impurities, being beyond the limits of human cognitive ability.
This crisis of representation has not yet been overcome in contemporary art. It is impossible to appeal to high ideals, to anything transcendent, after Auschwitz.
Culture as a field that works with meanings has compromised itself because it has not overcome the temptation of totalitarianism. But evil is still tempting to the artist.
This temptation constantly looms in front of him, like in front of the Faustus of Thomas Mann, who, incidentally, was consulted by Theodor Adorno during the writing of his novel.
It is no coincidence that modern culture, which today is predominantly a mass culture, tries to avoid the subject of death, and thus the subject of the Holocaust, in every possible way.
Firstly, because it «does not tolerate memory stored in the unconscious». Secondly, according to the famous philosopher and writer Boris Paramonov, «…the big themes have gone — couldn’t help but go — from the art of modern times, because they have gone from life.
Humanity remained instead of ideals — with the simplest joys of existence: while you are not yet torn to pieces by an artillery shell, enjoy safe sex…
And it is impossible not to notice in the current art, which tries to be something like art, that is to say, acts with some «projects», this discouragement with the theme of death…
Real art keeps quiet or engages in highbrow jokes, having lost faith not only in itself but also in humanity.
Culture is always «drawn» from society, and society, where the cult of success and «eternal youth» reigns, no longer wants to think about disease, suffering, death, and evil.
The horror of death has to do with the fact that it turns people into things — the lampshades made of human skin and the gas chambers of the Nazis demonstrated this with eerie clarity. Adorno believed that the less subjects live, the more horrible death appears to them.
Today, when they live long, well-fed, and total, and their existence is not threatened, indifference is perceived as a good thing.
«Death has become something completely unfamiliar, strange; the reason is that continuity in the flow of experience has disappeared, and this disappearance has social causes».
That’s why movies like «Shoah» are a must-see. They restore this cultural memory of death and the continuity of human experience. Latzman himself considered «oblivion» to be a disease of humanity, and any disease, as we know, needs to be treated.

MY HOMELAND — THIS MOVIE
When Mikhail Romm’s movie «Ordinary Fascism» was released in the Soviet Union, it did not go unnoticed in Europe. The Queen of Belgium even ordered all schoolchildren in Belgian educational institutions to watch it.
But we cannot say that the fate of Claude Lanzmann’s movie in the Soviet Union and the former Soviet Union was particularly successful. It is practically unknown to the general public. It is not shown in cinemas, schools, or on TV.
Although the movie itself and many scenes from it have become classics, they have had a huge impact not only on French but also on world cinema. The same incredible scene with the hairdresser was repeated and quoted many times in cinematography.
I will assume that the movie «Shoah» is trying to be overlooked for the same reasons that they deny the reality of the Holocaust. After seeing Lanzmann’s picture, which was intended, among other things, as a response to attempts to falsify history, it is impossible to doubt this.
However, Holocaust denial is not only an unconscious «rebellion against memory».
In 1985, Lanzmann spoke of the confusion of apologists for anti-Semitic ideology after the movie was released.
When it was shown on French television in 1987, they reacted by mass distribution of leaflets calling: «Open your eyes! Smash your TV sets!»
They put them up, they threw them around, they put them in mailboxes. Not only did they not want to see the truth, they prevented others from seeing it.
The truth about the Holocaust is inconvenient for totalitarian, sectarian consciousness, which is always fueled by some optimistic myth, cultivated in the modern world deliberately and far from harmless purposes.
The movie «Shoah» skinned alive this myth, preventing our consciousness from hiding behind yet another ideological illusion or once again justifying itself with the «banality of evil».
When, after the release of a movie about Israel, a journalist asked Lanzmann, «Monsieur, tell me, is your homeland France or Israel?» he replied, «My homeland is this movie». I think these words could well apply to the movie «Shoah».
And this is the most radical answer that modern cultural consciousness can give today to Nazi propaganda and any hateful ideology.
Read about another Holocaust movie, Vadim Perelman’s LESSONS OF FARSI: a story of survival and how a fictional language overcomes interpersonal and interethnic prejudice.