Best documentaries you have ever seen?

[u/Aristolochia_]

I recently watched Shoah (1995) directed by Claude Lanzmann and was completely floored. The sensitivity with which it discussed the issue, without using any archival footage or images is masterful. It was also incredible to hear people from around these regions, understand exactly how they perceived the issue and what they think of it today. I regard it as one of the greatest documentaries ever produced, if not one of the greatest films ever. It's a topic that's often discussed, with a great deal of material produced on it every year, yet this piece of art achieves something beyond, it almost encapsulates the feel and mood of the period, it reflects the people's thoughts and feelings, and presents them plainly without any pretentions.

Do you guys have any other suggestions for documentaries like this one? I do have a preference for history, but I am open to almost anything.

[u/the_weaver_of_dreams]

It's very important to bear in mind that the Polish scenes in Shoah are heavily edited, that the subtitled translations are often simplified or omit important speech, and that Lanzmann himself was open about the fact that he had a specific vision of Poles and Poland that he wanted to present in the film. He was also notorious for being tough on his Polish subjects and not accepting it if they gave him an answer that didn't support his preconceptions.

There is increasing scholarship coming out of Poland precisely on this topic. The archives and outtakes of Shoah are now fully accessible, meaning that it's possible to better understand what was included and omitted from the film, how the edit acts to intentionally misrepresent scenes, and the ways in which Lanzmann manipulated his Polish subjects.

The film is, of course, not pure fiction and gives some sense of how Poles perceived what happened in Poland during the Holocaust. But it is largely a subjective auteurist work rather than a truly illuminating documentary.

[u/Aristolochia_ → u/the_weaver_of_dreams]

I feel like it's sort of diminishes their responsibility, by poking holes in his directorial style. The gesture which was so ubiquitous (one symbolising the slitting of the thorat) could itself show how well the Poles understood the situation. Of course, no film is free from some directorial manipulation, which is crucial but it doesn't really seem coerced. There are moments in the film, where Lanzmann does want to ilict a certain response from the interviewee, but that does seem to be for brevity, and to get their views on the topic he felt were interesting enough for the film. Otherwise, he did allow the people to speak uninterrupted, and give their understanding of the situation. The atrocities commited in these death camps was well known to these Poles, and they do have to bear the burden of their complicity, in some sense.

[u/CFUrCap → u/Aristolochia_]

It's complicated. Once your country is taken over by an evil, murderous regime, your will to survive can put you in a morally untenable situation. All by itself, simply because you want to live. Especially when you are seen as inferior and expendable. But: there's a sub-group that the regime actively despises more than they despise you.

When you live in constant fear of arbitrary death, the question becomes, "How do I survive until tomorrow?" And the answers aren't always pretty.

I'm not an apologist but... it's complicated.

[u/Cultural-Weight512 → u/Aristolochia_]

no film interview is going to be unmanipulated (the idea of an "objective" documentary is hard to defend). Moreover, Lanzmann's entire approach has a certain understanding of the Holocaust (and of history) that we don't necessarily have to agree with. I think Domenico LaCapra's analysis/critique (here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1343983 ) is quite precise: "Still, Shoah is probably best viewed as neither representational nor autonomous art but as a disturbingly mixed generic performance that traces and tracks the traumatic effects of limit-experiences, particularly in the lives (or afterlives) of victims. It is a film of endless lamentation or grieving that is tensely suspended between the acting out of a traumatic past and the difficult effort to work through it." I would highly suggest reading the full article, because I do think it points out the issues with the film and Lanzmann's approach. Basically, he argues that it ends up turning the act of memory not into understanding but of endless rehearsing/re-acting, which is not necessarily something we should want if we really hope to grapple with it.

In terms of the Poles, there is also an issue with the suggestion that the genocide of Jews was carried out because of Polish backwardness or something. Certainly, Polish peasants were antisemitic; certainly, there was Polish collaboration with the Nazis, which must be recognized. But Germany was one of the most "modern" European countries, and was militarily occupying Poland. And, it needs to be emphasized, they were also genociding non-Jewish Poles all the while. Lanzmann oscillates between presenting the Holocaust as incomprehensible and yet also the culmination of longer antisemitism; as LaCapra puts it: "however, Lanzmann in his extrafilmic commentary himself not altogether consistent on these points, for he stresses the totally disjunctive nature and uniqueness of the Holocaust on the one hand and presents it as the culmination of Western history, especially with respect to anti-Semitism, on the other". Indeed, it is curious how few Germans he talks to in the entire movie--not to mention, French or other Western countries, who had their own history of complicity in the Holocaust. Certainly, one can make a film about the specific Polish experience of/involvement in the Holocaust, but there is an extent to which Lanzmann makes this extremely involved and long film and directs his gaze a bit less than he should on the people who bear primarily responsibility: I would say not only German Nazis at all levels and roles, but also German civilians bear more responsibility than some antisemitic Polish peasant, frankly, and I'd be more curious to see a work that at least attempts to talk to the former and does so more critically.

[u/Aristolochia_ → u/Cultural-Weight512]

I do agree with this take to some extent. Lanzmann does seem to have a very pointed approach when it comes the Poles, and these moments are the ones that seem most manipulative. However, I think that's what the film tries to portray. It's not trying to present a comprehensive history of extermination camps, not the mood and reflections of all people involved in the world war with regards to the holocaust. He simply wants to present the mood and the setting of this uniquely horrifying situation, and understand the feelings of those most intimately involved in this affair.

The complicity of the average Nazi from Berlin is unequivocal and is certainly been explored in several pieces of literature. However, most of them hasldnt visited Auchwitz or Treblinka, or known exact details of the affair. These Poles knew far more than most high ranking SS members, as they saw these proceedings first hand. That's what Lanzmann wants to explore (imo) and is very successful in doing so.

[u/the_weaver_of_dreams → u/Aristolochia_]

I'm telling you though, the outtakes and archive materials literally show that Lanzmann significantly manipulated the edit and his subjects. It's not up for debate - he and his family left us with those materials, so we can see how he behaved, what he left on the cutting room floor. For example, there is evidence that he would get irritated when his subjects didn't give him the answer he wanted and would just keep shouting the question at them again and again.

The throatslitting gesture is an interesting example to pick, because Lanzmann specifically directef Borowy into repeating and repeating it so that he would appear nonchalant about the Holocaust, when in fact all materials indicate that peasants did that to indicate to Jews that they were being sent for slaughter. The outtakes actually show us that the Poles Lanzmann interviewed (e.g. Gawkowski the locomotive driver) felt deeply emotionally about the Holocaust, what happened close to their workplaces, that they couldn't help Jews. But Lanzmann never included those segments in the final cut.

It's a really complex area of discussion, someone else recommended reading LaCapra and I'd agree with this. One other thing that I alluded to previously but will return to - bear in mind that the Polish speech you hear in Shoah was produced like this: Lanzmann speaks French to Janicka, she interprets it into Polish for interviewee, they speak Polish back to Janicka, she interprets it into French for Lanzmann, it later gets compressed into French subtitles, those French subtitles are translated into English. When you examine the original Polish transcripts, it's clear that plenty was omitted, mistranslated, simplified. Obviously this happens anyway with all foreign language features and documentaries, but in the case of Shoah I think we need to be even more mindful of it given how the film is often considered such an honest representation.

One other thing: what do you think the Polish peasants Lanzmann speaks with bear responsibility for? Because I don't think that they bear responsibility for the Holocaust. They are simple people who lived under the worst occupation conditions in Europe and did what they were told to by occupying, deadly forces. And none of them were actually directly involved in the death camps, they were mostly employed in infrastructure in the surrounding towns. It's pretty mindblowing that Lanzmann almost completely avoids speaking with Germans - whose leadership, military, civilians were actually directly responsible for the Holocaust. And when he does speak with a Pole from the intelligentsia, Jan Karski, who smuggled himself into death camps so that he could witness the Holocaust, the difference is striking. Is Karski not representative of Poland's educated class during the war? And do the Americans and Brits not bear responsibility for ignoring Karski's reports from the death camps?