JoeytheBrit
The Grey Zone explores well-covered territory from a unique angle: that of the Jewish prisoners who prolonged their lives by four months by becoming members of a unit used to herd their fellow prisoners into the gas chambers. Inevitably, such a subject matter raises the question of to what lengths the viewer would go in order to stay alive, and the cost to the people who found themselves capable of colluding with their captors. When one new arrival to Auschwitz, ferried straight from the train to the shower's changing room, loudly challenges Hoffman (David Arquette) over his and his friend's breezy instructions to remember the number of the hook on which they hang their clothes so that they can find them after the shower, Hoffman beats him to a bloody pulp – as if for forcing him to confront what he is doing to his people. Despite this, the performances are subdued for the most part, the prisoner's attitudes to their situation almost matter-of-fact. Given fine food and alcohol in payment for their work, they live in ivory towers that have been stained by human ashes.The survival of a young girl after showering in the Nazi's deadly gas just as the men are preparing to stage their revolt triggers an emotional crisis amongst the members of the unit, with some insisting she be killed for their protection and others demanding she be allowed to live. They face a dilemma that is mirrored by those of the German soldiers who mill around the girl uncertainly after the protesters have all been killed. There is a line beyond which even those who have grown almost inhumanly inured to killing will hesitate to step. The girl, alone and defenceless, unlike the masses herded into the showers, forces them to put a face to their victims and ejects them from their oddly cocooned existence.The film is an adaptation of a stage play, apparently, and this fact is evident in the dialogue, which sometimes seems unreal, as if the speakers are somehow detached from the emotions they are supposed to be feeling. This may be deliberate, another example of the tamping down of their true emotions, but its sometimes distracting. Despite this, the performances are good, especially that of Harvey Keitel who seems to grow into the part of the German officer who knows he has lost touch with everything that made him human.
Dalazen_Junior
During the last days of World War II, as the soviets' bombs explode closer and closer as the days go by, the routine of concentration camp Awschwitz follows its course and represents the focus of this picture: the atmosphere of dread and death inhabiting the heavy air, the work inside the crematorium, the random executions of men, women and children,and the drama of the Jewish sonderkommando, a group formed by prisoners who, in exchange of better food and clothes, helped their tormentors in the systematic of death inside the camps, guiding the new arrived prisoners through the corridors that lead to the gas chambers, and the disposal of the bodies after wards, just to be killed some time latter. Let me just say this right from the get go: The Grey Zone is the finest, ultimate, grittiest portrayal of the Holocaust, in all its ugliness and horror. On the fact that The Grey Zone is highly underrated and little known is a complete mystery for me. Where Schindler's List bravely portrayed the dark events that went around in Germany, circa 1940's, it was built towards the light, towards an uplifting ending where hope prevails and courageous acts save the day. The Grey Zone, instead, offers no hope or alternative, nor uplifting ways, nor any of the characters show any noble redeeming actions towards their fellow inmates. Ultimately, it's about survival, and how we get our morals lost so easily when the instinct to stay alive kicks in. The Grey Zone's ugliness packs one hard punch - never in any other movie death was shown in such a realistic, brutal light. You actually fell you're inside the corridors of the crematorium, it's like you're trapped inside these tiny, claustrophobic gas chambers, it's like the putrid smell of the dead, yellow corpses piled up on the floor and the dread gets under your skin and stays there for days.Tim Blake Nelson was at the helm of The Grey Zone, and what a masterful filmmaker Mr. Nelson is...The sense of dread and dark tonalities of The Grey Zone put David Cronenberg to the shame. It should be regarded not as a movie, but as an experience.The script is tight and sober, reminded me of David Mamet in his most inspiring moments, regarding the dialogs and the exchanges between the characters. The photography and art department deserve praise: Awschwitz was worse than hell and people who visit these old concentration camps tend to say that after wards they fell this aura of pain and sadness. With Tim Blake Nelson's picture, although you're not physically there, The Grey Zone works as a tour through this place worse than hell. It is as creepy as the creepiest film can get, trust me.Performances here are all top notch and career defining. What really hurts is that The Grey Zone didn't get its deserved attention, because it poignantly proved what some movie stars are capable of, given the right material: David Arquette, an actor known for light comedies, is strikingly magnetic as the most fragile, mentally weakened sonderkommando, and his scenes are nothing short than harrowing and visceral. The moment when he is confronted by a newcomer prisoner about to be guided to the gas chamber is the stuff of cinematic history in terms of acting: as Arquette tells his lies ("you'll be guided to the bath and soon will be reunited with your family", and so on), this scared newcomer, realizing his fate, confronts him and says "It's a lie, I can't believe it's Jews doing this job!I'm going to die, but I'm going to live longer than you ever will, you're dead already!!", the desperate prisoner shouts at Arquette, and then Arquette loses his head and attacks this man to death, breaking his skull with punches and kicks, not really moved by angriness, but by sorrow and pain to recognize the awfulness of the truth spit on his face - yes, even him, Arquette, can't believe he is doing this, and the outlet of such sorrow comes into the forms of him losing his head and degrading and smashing a fellow Jew's skull to the death. Such a scary, harrowing movie moment... Mira Sorvino was a joy, and be prepared, you won't recognize her at first. The depths this wonderful actress went to create her character in a realistic light should be applauded. Mrs. Sorvino was highly commended for her work in Woody Allen's 1995 movie, but her performance in The Grey Zone rises above her other work, that's the picture Mrs. Sorvino should be recognized and awarded for.The other members of the cast have my respect, but I wanted to specifically point the performances of Sorvino and Arquette as the picture's true highlight in terms of acting. It was a crime that Lions Gate didn't work hard to promote this powerful material. The Grey Zone is a must see and a must have, a tour de force with performances for the ages and top notch cinematic achievements in every single department. A true ten, as exciting as films can get!!
Neil Doyle
Despite all the realism depicted in THE GREY ZONE amid the actual day to day operations of a Nazi prison camp, there's a certain stage quality in the dialog that serves as a reminder that you're watching the screen version of a stage play and not what should seem more like a true life documentary. That's the fault of the script taken from David Mamet's play and other eye-witness sources--but the acting is excellent.And yet, it does manage to convey just how those prison camps used other prisoners to operate the gas chambers, to carry out the deed with false promises--"Just be sure to remember where you hook the clothes so you can pick up your belongings when you leave"--and the backbreaking jobs of loading trucks with dead bodies and depositing them on chutes that go directly into a blazing furnace. Amid all this, various stories are entwined involving the petty quarrels among the men assigned to these tasks so they could prolong their own lives for at least four months of assured survival.The story involving a girl who does not die during the twenty-minute gassing and is then revived and how the men argue over how to protect her from further harm, is intense and touching in that it shows the humanity that is still in their souls. Her story and how it ends is one of the film's most memorable and touching elements.This is more of an in depth look at "the final solution" than any other recent films dealing with the extermination of Jews has ever been, with the exception of SCHINDLER'S LIST and THE PIANIST in which the accent was more on the triumph of the human spirit and a much broader view of the war itself in epic mode.This is a darker, intimate look at the actual operation of the camps as experienced by a handful of prisoners--the brutality, the torture, and raises the question: how far would you go to survive? It also shows how not all the Jews were as passive about their fate as some have claimed, often opposing the Nazi officers and paying for it with their lives.In the hands of a greater director, it might have been an even more impressive film than it is, so that I'm unable to place it in the same class with the two films mentioned above. The cast is uniformly good, but HARVEY KEITEL is outstanding as an SS Commander keeping strict tabs on the camp's hard-working doctor.In its own way, it's just as important. Young students of history would be well advised to view this one for a better understanding of how "the final solution" was supposed to occur and the methods used to carry out an enormous project known as "the holocaust".
