The single shot of the Nazi guard, slouched, bored and nonchalant against the gas chamber door, while the stripped-bare women and children beat on the walls within, might be the most profound and provocative image I've seen this year. In communicating the absolute horror of the death camps at their most basic and human - reinforcing Jean-Luc Godard's notion that the only way to successfully portray the Holocaust on film is to make a movie about the guard who spends all day complaining that the out-going carts are too heavy to push - this single image, depicting the most monstrous indifference, is far more successful than anything in Steven Spielberg's arguably manipulative (or at least disingenuous) Schindler's List (1993).
The subsequent shots of post-mortem tooth-pulling and child-cremation are unnecessary, but, like the more sensational elements of Stoic (2009) and Darfur (2009), illustrate the absolute commitment that Boll brings to these "personal-projects", and his always fascinating attempts to make movies that combine the Art-House with the Grind-House. In all truth, he might even be the most interesting filmmaker currently working in North America.
Auschwitz directed by Uwe Boll, 2011:
