The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

A monumental 9½ hours epic that was 11 years in the making, Shoah is the definitive film about the Holocaust that presents a vital slice of human history without employing a single frame of archived footage in its imagery and paints an extraordinarily grim, utterly devastating & emotionally shattering account of the greatest evil of modern times through the collective testimonies of survivors, witnesses & even German perpetrators to cement its spot amongst the greatest & most essential documentaries to ever grace the film canvas.

With commenting this film we are going out of the movie industry to get into history and the world that it shaped. This rating concerns the importance of the theme of the movie and the effort and the enormous importance of the established work.The film draws us into the deepest, dark and dirty human intentions that led to and are even devoid of any humane sense. It is shown the downfall of modern humanity, which mimics the barbaric world of the past. The long centuries of experience appear to be insufficient to call for peace and universal existence. On the contrary, it seems that the negative trends will not disappear very soon.Although it is not shown any atrocity, the stories of witnesses of the war are enough to push our imagination to unthinkable mental pictures. It remains impossible to think and honestly to sympathize to storytellers due to lack of language in which we could understand what they experienced. We can only be able to pity them when they do not find the strength to continue their stories and to bow to their power to tell everyone about the downfall of much part of mankind.Extremely long and difficult story that requires serious approach and interest in the topic. Valuable result.http://vihrenmitevmovies.blogspot.com/

I have always been interested in the Holocaust since i first learned about it in school, but its in the last couple of years i have been studying it to the point that i actually could consider myself an amateur holocaust scholar ( alt-ho that term somehow seems a bit non PC in this context ), so when i came across a 9+ hour documentary i was very intrigued as i find it problematic to find raw unedited books or films about the topic. The film offers a huge collection of first hand testimony of the atrocities that occurred during Nazi rule from both victims ,offenders and general witnesses. The interviews with the survivors is both gripping and chilling and gives you a better feel of the actual fear they must have felt in contrast to what certain other movies have been able to as they talk in detail about the actual specific things that took place. In this part of the film he ( Lanzmann ) does a great job, and thats because he lets them talk for themselves.... as for the offenders and gen.witnesses he fails and this is why;First off he seems to blend the two, that is he seems to be under the impression that as long as you where there and didn't do everything to stop it then you are an offender in the genocide, the most apparent and appalling examples of this is when he interviews some poor polish peasants from "hillbilly"-land , have them look into the camera and ask them ( and I'm paraphrasing ) " was the Jews that lived here rich ? " thus getting them to say a common antisemitic phrase "the Jews around here were rich" and then lets them stare into the camera unable to detect what just happened. This is also apparent when he asks them questions about what they witnessed ( usually someone living nearby the Reinhard camps ) and when they answer he has this way of responding with a subtle sarcastic manner that implies they didn't care what happened, even tho most of them actually did try to warn the people in the incoming trains and the like. About the offenders ( i think he talks to 2 or 3 ) i agree that i don't find much sympathy for them but Claude should just let them speak and not interrupt them and try to get them to break down as that has no relativity to the purpose of the film IMO. He constantly tells the ex Treblinka guard that he doesn't believe him, really ? , the guy sits there and willingly speaks of seeing Human feces in rows outside the gas chambers but he is somehow lying about other details ? that doesn't make any sense. I will say tho that when he talks to the guy who was one of the people in charge of the Warsaw ghetto that claims he didn't know anything, his disbelief is justified.My last problem with this film is that it not only doesn't mention the non-Jewish victims it seems to purposely avoid the subject. One particular scene comes to mind when a Pole tells a heart gripping story about a mom getting shot with her kid ( i cant remember detail ) outside the train and Lanzmann asks quickly, even interrupting, " was she Jewish ?". Does that matter ? She was a victim of the holocaust and she got shot with her kid but shes not worth remembering because she was a non-Jew ?I might seem very disappointed in this film but its actually not that bad. I just think Claude should have left himself out of the camera and let the people involved speak for them-self to the extent that it is possible.Great collection of very important history but , but with some serious issues

i have only watched the first disc and i wanted to cry and pull my hair and tear my clothing and wail out loud. i am not Jewish nor am i related to any survivors or victims. i have known many people with the tattoos, as i am the same age as most of them. they are all dead now. i am not, esp. in my heart.first, i thought that it was visually beautiful. i had a visceral reaction when the director was insistent even to the point of bullying the cast. i worried that if they began to relive it all they would come undone and cry and wail for the rest of their lives, not be able to stop. on disc 1, though, the emotion ran high but no one lost control. perhaps something inside them is flat, just to survive.i thought this was an excellent portion of a film. i think the idea of getting all the survivors on tape before it is too late was a great one. i think the topic should not be avoided since there is genocide going on periodically all over the world. are the people who know the history of the holocaust then to intervene so that history will not be repeated or will we stand by? one thing i sensed strongly from the little bit i saw was the position that the townspeople or people in general who were not targets were in. i always thought they should have 'done something' but now i see 'what could they have done? they would have been murdered. along with their families, with total impunity. it would seem that the Nazis controlled everything and everyone at that time and place. even those who were not direct targets were victims in a way and have had to live with what they saw and their own helpless guilt. Carole/wannadance