The Last of the Unjust (15.)
Directed by Claude Lanzmann.
Featuring Benjamin Murmelstein and Claude Lanzmann. 218 mins.
Shoah, the 1985 nine hour oral history of the Holocaust, is a monumental, comprehensive, exhaustive and enclosed document; it is not a film you'd expect to generate a spin off. But having taken over 10 years to compile and edit the 350 plus hours of interview footage Lanzmann has since used it to create four further films, the longest of which is this.
Rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein was the last Elder of the Jews at the “model ghetto” Theresienstadt. He was the third incumbent of this position, the previous two having both been executed with a bullet in the back of the head. His job was to work with the Nazis to organize the day to day running of the town that the Nazis tried to use as a propaganda tool. Murmelstein is the only Jewish Elder to make it through the war. In his view he was a pragmatist who did what he could to keep as many Jews alive as possible. To others, including many of the other Theresienstadt survivors, he is a collaborator.
The film is simplicity itself. The bulk is footage from the 1975 interview in Rome (the very first interview conducted for Shoah) with the garrulous and digressive Murmelstein. The rest is scenes shot in 2012 of Lanzmann, now 87, visiting the locations covered in the conversation. In 1975 Murmelstein cut a feisty figure. The time for being cowed is over for him and here he was making his defence quite forcefully, leaving spaces for judgements to be made about his conduct, but firmly steering you towards what that verdict should be. Lanzmann, puffing away on a cigarette, casually dressed, wearing a suit and legs crossed, comes across as a West Bank Michael Parkinson. In the later footage, the 87-year-old moves haltingly around synagogues and the derelict remains of the ghetto. You can almost hear the knees creaking; he moves like his legs were stilts.
The Lanzmann is not a director to have much truck with the concept of getting to the point and though the film bears its daunting running time relatively lightly, you may wonder if he isn't milking it a little. Shoah needed the heft of its running time to match its aims to be an exhaustive examination of the crime, as well as to be a little act of retribution. Shoah though aimed to be the complete story, while this is a single strand and the running length has the opposite effect here. Rather than being a comprehensive study the film seems to drift along without any real focus.
Before the war, Murmelstein had the chance to get out of Germany. What kept him was a “desire for adventure,” which is perhaps a more honest version of the favoured politician line about “wanting to serve.” Throughout you can sense the enthusiasm he had for the terrible tasks he had to the complete, even compiling the lists of names “to be sent east,” and the games of cat and mouse he had to engage in with the Nazis to try and keep people alive. He describes it as “the absence of power” but even its absence can be intoxicating, maybe corrupting. He sees himself as a comic figure, the man who was handed an unforgiveable and tragic role to fulfill and did so to the best of his abilities. The depressing lesson of the film perhaps is how history is shaped by people who can't resist the lure of power and influence, no matter how the obscene that power and influence is.
Murmelstein is an ambiguous figure – even if, as he tentatively suggests, his actions saved thousands of lives. The film though is content to pass its judgement and to find in his favour. The film ends with Lanzmann putting his arm around him.
Directed by Claude Lanzmann.
Featuring Benjamin Murmelstein and Claude Lanzmann. 218 mins.
Shoah, the 1985 nine hour oral history of the Holocaust, is a monumental, comprehensive, exhaustive and enclosed document; it is not a film you'd expect to generate a spin off. But having taken over 10 years to compile and edit the 350 plus hours of interview footage Lanzmann has since used it to create four further films, the longest of which is this.
Rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein was the last Elder of the Jews at the “model ghetto” Theresienstadt. He was the third incumbent of this position, the previous two having both been executed with a bullet in the back of the head. His job was to work with the Nazis to organize the day to day running of the town that the Nazis tried to use as a propaganda tool. Murmelstein is the only Jewish Elder to make it through the war. In his view he was a pragmatist who did what he could to keep as many Jews alive as possible. To others, including many of the other Theresienstadt survivors, he is a collaborator.
The film is simplicity itself. The bulk is footage from the 1975 interview in Rome (the very first interview conducted for Shoah) with the garrulous and digressive Murmelstein. The rest is scenes shot in 2012 of Lanzmann, now 87, visiting the locations covered in the conversation. In 1975 Murmelstein cut a feisty figure. The time for being cowed is over for him and here he was making his defence quite forcefully, leaving spaces for judgements to be made about his conduct, but firmly steering you towards what that verdict should be. Lanzmann, puffing away on a cigarette, casually dressed, wearing a suit and legs crossed, comes across as a West Bank Michael Parkinson. In the later footage, the 87-year-old moves haltingly around synagogues and the derelict remains of the ghetto. You can almost hear the knees creaking; he moves like his legs were stilts.
The Lanzmann is not a director to have much truck with the concept of getting to the point and though the film bears its daunting running time relatively lightly, you may wonder if he isn't milking it a little. Shoah needed the heft of its running time to match its aims to be an exhaustive examination of the crime, as well as to be a little act of retribution. Shoah though aimed to be the complete story, while this is a single strand and the running length has the opposite effect here. Rather than being a comprehensive study the film seems to drift along without any real focus.
Before the war, Murmelstein had the chance to get out of Germany. What kept him was a “desire for adventure,” which is perhaps a more honest version of the favoured politician line about “wanting to serve.” Throughout you can sense the enthusiasm he had for the terrible tasks he had to the complete, even compiling the lists of names “to be sent east,” and the games of cat and mouse he had to engage in with the Nazis to try and keep people alive. He describes it as “the absence of power” but even its absence can be intoxicating, maybe corrupting. He sees himself as a comic figure, the man who was handed an unforgiveable and tragic role to fulfill and did so to the best of his abilities. The depressing lesson of the film perhaps is how history is shaped by people who can't resist the lure of power and influence, no matter how the obscene that power and influence is.
Murmelstein is an ambiguous figure – even if, as he tentatively suggests, his actions saved thousands of lives. The film though is content to pass its judgement and to find in his favour. The film ends with Lanzmann putting his arm around him.
