Surname Viet, Given Name Nam was, in a few of parts, unintelligible. I read up on the film and understood a little more about what the director was attempting, which made me respect the piece more. There’s so much being presented here, though, between the rumination on translation and the meta-interview structure, that I think the basic element of portraiture gets lost.

UnBelonging, on the other hand, is a much clearer window to look through. I’m not trying to argue that simpler is better – UnBelonging goes a few layers deep with its reflections on war, personal loss and filmmaking – but there are bound to be problems when the piece clouds its subject matter because of all the moving parts.

On the other hand, I thought that Surname Viet Minh-ha was almost too much at once. The viewer is immediately thrown into a barrage of images and film and cultural music, and the narration doesn’t start for a little bit. For a cultural portrait, I felt almost overwhelmed, like I was just clearly an outsider. It moved into the film quickly, and the thesis wasn’t apparent, so I felt kind of thrown in to the film, and it caused me to lose interest and not pay as much attention to it. I will probably try watching it again at another time, though.

The footage of violence and interviews of the children turned into victims of this conflict is powerful enough without having to dramatize it. I liked that the movie did a relatively good job of telling the story without casting blame.

Surname Viet Given Name Nam shows the other side of this coin by blurring the line between what constitutes accurate and fictional interviews. The filmmaker tricks viewers into thinking the Vietnamese women are real people when they are actually actors. Though watching the movie itself was frustrating, the notion that any portrayal, be it a documentary, piece of media or fictional film inherently involves the politics and ideas of those producing it. This is important to remember. The representation of any subject matter always has a bias, whether this bias is clearly visible or not.

I was thinking about this film during this project. The effects the filmmakers/editors add to the still images are really innovative and apparently are something you could learn how to do yourself if you watched enough YouTube tutorials.

Night and Fog centered it’s emotional gravity on the callousness of nature, how beauty and life continues to grow rampantly, indifferently, moving past and covering up a place where only terrible memories are left behind. It is so striking to see the concentration camps in color–the almost cheery color of red brick, with brown roofs–all our pictorial documentation of the Holocaust is in black and white, and for some reason, you expect that, and the lack of color makes you able to separate yourself from This Piece of History. But seeing it in color shocks you–it looks so peaceful, and you suddenly realize that it was not grey-ish figures stumbling from the trains, but people, dressed in colorful coats and patterned fabric, the pale peachiness of their skin, the light flashing in their green or blue or brown eyes, walking toward the pleasant-looking building of their new homes. I can almost pretend that these people just look like they’re going on vacation–one woman even waves with her handkerchief, another man helps close the gate, as a courtesy.  You see that, and you see the peaceful scenery, and then you see the footage of emaciated bodies, almost unable to be deemed human, treated unfathomably callously, like so many commercial items. Powerful. Horrible, and powerful, merciless in it’s taunts.

Two things I found particularly effective:

1. The use of music was entirely ironic, fitting in with the peaceful country scenes, merely aggravated and antagonized my feelings as the Holocaust scenes were being shown.

2. Sometimes they would linger on a particular inocuous detail of the building, such as the vents, and then leave the interpretation to you, filling in the horror with the fathomless depths of depravity (not to get all cheesy and overdramatic, but seriously). “The vents were not sound-proof.” My mouth dropped open when I heard that. Beautiful, well-structured and poetic writing.

The emotional gravitas of Mr. Death was opposite–the filmmakers first set up a portrait of a bumbling engineer who only wished for the humanity in subjects that we usually find a black and white picture. He creates execution machines. He sees the humanity. We start liking him, being endeared to his loud opinions and logic. Then…the holocaust revisionist story starts. Then you start questioning his point of view–you know, people make guns for the purpose to kill, what’s the difference between that and his making the execution machines? Nazi concentration camp overseers designed ways of effective, mass genocide–who is to say that they weren’t taking into account the “humanity” of their actions either? That they would design these chambers to be as effective and painless as possible, much as Fred tries to. You start balking at his words and explanations, seeing them in this sinister light. But then you start to feel sorry for him as he starts being bullied by his beliefs, and having everything ripped out from under him–and the terrible things people have done to him, you wonder, what is the humanity in such hate? Do they happen to be any better than those that also commit other hate crimes, except that this is socially justified?

For this, I think the layering of the interviews and the clearly followed plotline handled the emotion well, because the audience would become invested in something not so typical, and then to be hit by a conundrum–the subtle layering on of different dimensions of a person is what makes the piece absolutely memorable.

He was good at this one thing, building this chair; he did the appropriate research, some serious calculations, and through his hard work many state prisons were able to electric shock their way to less crowded death rows.

From the footage of him working on the machine in his basement, it is obvious that he truly enjoys it. Not the chair’s purpose, of course, but the work. The engineering of it all. He is happy to be working. He grins about it.

Seemingly without conferring with him about it, America soon decided that this man was the foremost authority on methods of capital punishment. No one seemed to care that it was the science, and the math, and the troubleshooting of it that sparked (oh, bad) this man’s interest. They saw the smile, and the chair, and they thought to themselves, “This is Mr. Death. Make him build everything.”

He is the first to admit that he didn’t know much about lethal injection machines, or gas chambers, or gallows. But he modestly adds that that didn’t necessarily matter because, of course, he did the appropriate research, some serious calculations, and through his hard work, things happened. People died, right on schedule.

This man does not support torture, and therefore the lethal injection machine is his least favorite. It takes too long, and anyway, the man being executed has nothing to look at the entire time but a sterile ceiling. At least a TV could be something, he says. At least some pictures on the wall.

Every inmate about to be executed, he says, “should be afforded the highest dignity, because he is about to lose his own life.”

In his basement workshop, in prison execution rooms and standing on their gallows, in forensic laboratories and German concentration camps, Mr. Death’s loopy looking smile and wide eyes exacerbated by his thick black glasses’ frames reflect what he sees there, which is in no way death.

There is more to this film, of course, and with every additional person introduced, its situation get a little messier. But at its core is a strangely eloquent Boston engineer, who sees in his work only science and learning, when everyone else sees murder.

So the emotional gravity in both films stems from truth, and the way that they deal with it. Night and Fog carries emotional gravity because it is presented as absolute truth. As we watch these black and white images, with their chilling scenes and omnipotent narrator, we are watching history in action. People did this, the film says. Wrap your head around that.

And it’s arresting for that reason. There’s something to be said for the impact a stripped-down, no-frills piece can have, especially with the images that Night and Fog presents. It’s like a good piece of investigative newspaper reporting – this is truth. Now what are we going to do about it?

Mr. Death treats truth in a totally different way. Here we’re presented with a main character who seems to be convinced that he went out, performed scientific work and presented facts. He’s a simple engineer who was sent to do a job, not some anti-semite. and now he’s being persecuted because of it.

But is this really the case? On one level, we question Leuchter’s scientific truth. Morris gives enough evidence to suggest that his research methods were faulty. On another level, though, we question Leuchter’s self-awareness. His mild-mannered scientist defense would ring truer had he not gone on to give speeches at Holocaust denial conventions. He seemed to relish the attention, perhaps finding social acceptance in a world where that was increasingly hard to come by, given his views.

Thus this film sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. its emotional gravity is tied up in an absence of truth. What does Leuchter really believe, and why does he really believe it? It’s not totally clear, but it is totally fascinating, and I couldn’t look away.

Through a variety of sources that supported and rejected Leuchter (though most did not support Leuchter), Morris gave an interesting perspective to this complicated man who became so villainized and really did so with a lot of style. For a non-verite documentary comprised of talking head interviews, there were a lot of visuals tying all the film together. Like we talked about in class, there are certain constraints as to what b-roll you are able to use when you’re making a film essay or documentary, especially when you’re on a budget. Morris’ choices to bend rules of a lot of non-fiction filmmaking by recreating scenes, rotating the camera and using filters/effects reminded me of James Marsh, who of course came after Morris. Eye contact is especially unusual in documentaries because interview subjects are usually framed to the side, but this was crucial in interviewing someone like Leuchter who was trying to tell his side of the story. The soundbites that Morris got out of Leuchter were incredibly intimate (though Leuchter himself made my blood BOIL). I thought Leuchter was totally untrained and unqualified to go to Poland and oblivious as to how his actions would influence history and even his own life, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he should be excused. I think a lot of anti-Semitism still goes undetected or is forgiven today.

Night and Fog came just ten years after the Holocaust actually happened, and I thought it was a more literal interpretation of the horrors of the war. Most of the film was difficult and heartwrenching to watch. I grew up in Alabama; we didn’t really learn a lot about the Holocaust (and even at Northwestern, I haven’t). Reading the subtitles almost always provides a different experience of a film than watching and listening, and I actually enjoyed reading the subtitles because the language of the film was so beautiful and inspiring: “the doors were created for people to pass through only once” (though devastating at the same time). Past and present were interwoven through black/white film, shots taken in the present, dolly shots through the camps- sometimes I was unable to tell if Resnais was using archival footage during a shot or if it was something he had filmed himself. Though the camps are empty, Resnais captured the eerie feeling that lingers. Much of that was done without words- through changing still photographs every few seconds. I can’t say that I was a fan of the music, but then again the technology in the 1950s didn’t allow for ambient Garageband soundscapes. For me, Night and Fog also explored the dangers and consequences of denial, which happened WHILE the Holocaust was going on by the SS and Germans.

A few things I pondered while watching the films: what role do the directors/filmmakers have in setting the mood for a film about an event like the Holocaust? Is there a certain boundary that we cannot cross? (I think so, but I’m one of the most sensitive people I know).

The entire time I was watching Night and Fog I was trying to understand why it had been assigned. It was released in 1955 – just 10 years after the Holocaust – and seemed squarely intended for that audience, and audience that had still yet to truly understand the sheer awful magnitude of such levels of genocide. I think if a similar film was released today with shocking, gory footage from 9/11, it would get a very strong emotional response, the same response I think the French of 1955 would have to this film. However, I’ve had so much exposure to the Holocaust at this point – whether it be reading memoirs in school, hearing survivors speak at my synagogue, or just watching films on the subject – that a film like this can never have the impact it must’ve had in 1955. This isn’t to say it’s without impact. I think some of these images (and I’m thinking of the “lopped-off-heads-in-a-basket-next-to-their-decapitated-bodies” picture in particular) were more graphic and stunning than any I had ever seen. That is the emotional core of the film, but it’s not something I think could easily resonate in my writing.

Why? Because it’s rooted so deeply in the subject. Throughout my studies, I feel that I’ve been fighting a constant tug-of-war between style and subject. Some teachers say that you have to find a good subject, that your topic should speak for itself. Others have advocated for taking any mundane thing as your spark, but then expanding it with great writing. I’ve always felt comfortable somewhere in between, but I’ve noticed how freaking HARD it is to find a good subject. Resnais found an amazingly important and meaningful subject, and let it do the talking. How could I possibly emulate him when I can’t find a source like that?

Mr. Death made me feel the same way. It was stirring because of the incredible figure at its center, an extremely unique and wildly interesting man. I didn’t think there was much emotional gravity outside of the times when Leuchter was talking; this was 100% his movie, and he owned it because he’s so bizarrely frank that it almost seems as if he’s about to crack up, point his finger at us, and say “Ha ha, you actually believed I, a smart, career-oriented man, would think that? What are you, nuts?” And yet he doesn’t, and it’s amazing, and emotional stirring, but once again, how could I possibly hope to come anywhere near this? How could I possibly find a fresh, original centerpiece as compelling as the Holocaust or Leuchter?

I have no idea, but I’m going to have to try. We were told to “go big” with our final projects, and I still don’t know where to find that. These two directors went big with strong results. I, so far, haven’t found anything of the sort that speaks to me in the same way.