Many thoughts occurred to this reviewer while watching The Commandant’s Shadow, not the least of which was why has there not been a bigger push to market this film? This is one of the best, most cogent and emotionally wrenching, honest and clear-eyed Holocaust documentaries ever made. Telling the story of two families, one the descendants of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss, and the other, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and her daughter, the film is about memory, reckoning, love, hate, denial, confusion and discovery, among so many other things.
Courtesy Warner Bros
Kai Hoss, the grandson of Rudolf, and Maya Lasker-Wallfisch, the daughter of Anita, are the “next generation” asking for a reckoning with the past, and finding two different, yet not totally dissimilar responses in their parents. Hans, the son of Rudolf, has memories his son is convinced are incomplete, that Hans has “subconsciously blocked out some horrors, to guard his sanity” while Maya’s mother has a very matter of fact approach. For Anita, the past is the past, and she will not spend time feeling sorry for herself or looking to forgive others. This is important, as forgiveness is a central theme in this work. Kai, as it happens, is a minister.
For Kai, this is not about finding absolution, but seeking a path to avoiding the sins of the past by confronting them honestly. He is concerned with generational guilt, and wants his father to understand, fully, what kind of a man Rudolf Hoss truly was. Slowly, over the course of the film, Hans does indeed come to discover what sort of man his father truly was. Maya, meanwhile, goes on a search for her German roots, and this leads her into contact with the Hoss family, culminating in a visit with Kai and Hans to Auschwitz and then to Anita’s living room.
In amongst all this is plenty of history about the Holocaust, and examinations of how history is interpreted, and why. A visit to Hans’s sister, Brigitte, nicknamed Puppi, who now lives in the United States, is revealing in the way her views of the Hoss family differ. Indeed, she can best be described as a denier of the Holocaust, or at least a skeptic of its scope. Is she merely a child who will not accept the truth about her parents, particularly her mother, or is she something far worse? Hans and Kai, as it happens, seem more interested in truth, even if Hans still has some memories of his mother that he does not want to tarnish with that truth.
Courtesy Warner Bros
The film runs at around an hour and forty-five minutes, and while at times it speeds by, there are moments it lags. This is true particularly when we get a bit too much of Maya being self-indulgent, or yet another moment of Hans learning something about his family that he, as his son suggests, probably already knew, deep down inside. How well the film works for you depends on how much you can go along with these repetitions, and how much you want to see the eventual meetings of the minds. Indeed, the final fifteen or twenty minutes might sum up the feelings of many survivors and the children of the Nazi regime better than almost anything else recently put on film. Or, perhaps not. Perhaps Anita, Maya, Kai and Hansare unique in how they seek understanding, and peace, without begging or granting forgiveness.
Courtesy Warner Bros
Is the film worth seeing? Yes. Is it one of the best documentaries of the past few years? Again, yes, and it is one of the best Holocaust documentaries in ages. The still images of people being sent into the gas chambers (labeled onscreen as selected for extermination) is something you will not be able to shake. It works as an unofficial companion to Zone of Interest, and seeing both will deepen the appreciation of the two films. Yet, for as great as this is, I can not see everyone loving it. There are too many moments of people talking to the camera, and too many instances of people learning the same type of lesson, again and again. We do not get to see how this is a reaction, in ways, to Han’s other son, Rainer, and his defrauding people about the Holocaust. That part is left out, except for perhaps one very oblique reference. We also do not get a good grasp of the relationship between Anita and Maya, which at first seems fractured but by the end, seems to have always been pretty solid. Perhaps it is just the way Anita and Maya interact with each other, and Maya’s need for more contrasting with her mother’s matter of fact and logical approach to life, colliding and causing confusion for the viewer. Yet, it is worthy of your time, warts and all.
The Commandant’s Shadow is now playing in theaters and Streaming on Max later this year.
This sounds potentially excellent.
This looks interesting!