The Grey Zone

by Brandon Judell


No Pink Triangles here, yet Tim Blake Nelson's The Grey Zone will still bang you over the head with its chronicling of interminable horrors.

Based upon a memoir by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, this the story of Auschwitz's Sonderkommando, a squad of Jews who for a period of up to four months lead other Jews to the gas chambers, then afterwards drag out the naked, dead corpses to the ovens. This group's reward: food, wine and bed linen. But then when their four months are up, they're killed, too, quickly replaced by more Jews.

Writer/director Nelson tries to capture the psychology of the men who have "agreed" to this task. After all what choice did they have?
And what keeps them going? The hope of being able to survive one more day, a day when the war might be finally over? No, not exactly.

At least the realists don't believe the war will ever be over in time for them to survive. If so, why not do something to save their souls? But what? How about blowing up a crematorium?

And that's just what they do. But the power of The Grey Zone is not so much in its plot as in its visuals and the truths it unearths.

Acting-wise, you almost wish this film had been dubbed into another language and subtitled. The Nazis (e.g. Harvey Keitel) speak with a German accent, while the Polish and Hungarian Jews speak with broad American accents. David Arquette, Mia Sorvino, and several of the others grow on you. But every time Steve Buscemi and Natasha Lyonne open their mouths, you think they're auditioning for a dinner theater version of Fiddler on the Roof.

Yet whatever its limitations, The Grey Zone will shake you up. Here is a movie that asks difficult questions, an activity few other entertainments venture nowadays.