The Auschwitz report

Bebjak’s movie tries and succeeds in showing a new vision of what happened in Auschwitz reminding theviewer that, specially nowadays, we cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The slovak director Peter Bebjak, known for directing The Line (2017), presents a new long-feature film based in the true story of two slovak jews that escaped from Auschwitz II - Birkenau and wrote the Vrba-Wetzler Report, also known as The Auschwitz Report.

Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, two writers that were moved to Auschwitz II – Birkenau in 1940, managed to escape from the concentration camp thanks to the support and silence of their companions. Both of them took the responsibility of risking their lifes to go out and report what was happening in Auschwitz, knowing that it would mean days of torture for the rest of prisioners. This is the true story that The Auschwitz Report tells, where the young actors Noel Czuczor and Peter Ondrejicka will assume the roles of Wetzler and Vrba respectively.

With a great acting from all the cast, the story allows us to discover two real and not known enough men that not only had an incredible courage to escape and tell their story, but also showed an admirable determination to overcome all the adversities to save as many lives as possible.

At a cinematographic level, it is remarkable the use of subjective shots and steady cam, a recourse that, according to the director, introduces to make the viewer live the scenes through the eyes of the main characters in a world where fear and death are your only companions. The lack of vivid colors and the use of aberrant shots contributes to the feeling of hopelessness and impotence, invading the viewer with a dark, grey and overwhelming atmosphere that will last throughout the film.

The movie shows in a brutally realistic way some of the atrocities that happened inside Auschwitz II - Birkenau, something specially shocking because they do not abuse of the dramatism and sadism of the actions, but they use them as a background curtain to tell other stories. It is not important that hundreds of lifeless bodies accumulate in a hut, nor it is that a general appears playing among the heads of alive kids whose bodies are buried. It is not important because, in that context, is nothing out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, two men gathering real data to expose the facts is extra-ordinary, in the most literal meaning of the word.

The approach of Bebjak makes his movie stand out among its analogous reminding us that we are not just reflecting about the mistakes made in the past, but we also have to act so it does not happen again. Because as it happened in 1940, it may happen again in 2021 or 2050 if we do not do anything about it. From this perspective, used also in movies such as The Wave (2008) by Dennis Gansel or Look Who’s Back (2015) by David Wnendt, the director goes one step further and incorporates in the ending credits real speeches made by contemporary polititians to create an analogy and an alert towards some specific discourses.

The Auschwitz Report does not need well developed characters that evolve during the movie, with complex antagonists and a soundtrack that will make the viewer go through an emotional roller-coaster. Bebjak establishes only two goals, and he reaches them both: to tell the story of two heroes unknown until now, and remind us, as it is shown at the beginning of the film, that those who forget the history are condemned to repeat it. That is why his movie allows us to reflect, observing the past, about what we want for our future.

Mark: 7/10

Original review: https://contraste.info/cinema/critica-el-informe-auschwitz/