Who payed the critics

recommended

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

This documentary is in French without English subtitles, but none are really necessary, the images are powerful and speak for themselves. This is a poignant film showing the closing days of World War II. The film starts off showing the Allied armed forces taking German soldiers prisoner without much of a fight, then coming upon concentration camps.This film is different than most in this genre in that you don't see dead people or gas chambers - this may be due to the fact that the people liberated were in concentration camps, but not the full-blown death camps. Some of the people are so healthy that they attack their former tormentors who act very passive now that the shoe is on the other foot (there are armed American G.I.'s shown observing the scene).Some of the people saved from the camps are the living skeletons we are used to seeing: some can walk with someone supporting them, others have to be helped into a truck because they don't have enough muscle left to walk. It is surprising though, how many appear quite healthy and seemingly need just a spritz of de-lousing spray from the G.I.'s.The film shows a mass exodus of refugees returning to their home countries, and the ending shows concentration camp survivors on a train pulling into a French railroad station and being met by (it appears) friends and relatives who either survived the camps and arrived earlier, or evaded the Nazis the entire war.The film that most resembles this documentary is "The Truce", starring John Turturro. Turturro plays an Italian Jew who survives a concentration camp in good condition, but he has to endure a lengthy odyssey to get back to Italy once the camp he is in is liberated by the Russians.

After seeing "Le Retour," I felt that I had truly taken something from the film. The film used some great imagery that is parallel to the best that there is. Some of the real footage from this film was more shocking and realistic than that used in films today. If you ever have the opportunity to check it out, then do watch this picture.