Featuring: Bill Basch, Alice Lok Cahana, Renee Firestone, Tom Lantos, Irene Zisblatt
Director/Editor: James Moll
Producers: June Beallor and Ken Lipper
Cinematography: Harris Done
Music: Hans Zimmer
U.S. Distributor: October Films
When it comes to 20th century events, few have generated more unforgettable documentary footage than the Holocaust. Some of the films to assemble this material are so devastating in their depiction of the monstrous side of human nature that they are almost unwatchable. Many movie-goers, Jews and Gentiles alike, will not watch Holocaust movies because they dread the images they will see and the associated feelings of intense discomfort. For those who normally avoid this sort of production, The Last Days offers a compelling reason to make an exception. Like all filmed Holocaust essays, it is disturbing and wrenching, but there is also an undercurrent of inspiration and optimism in the portraits painted by film maker James Moll. At its core, The Last Days is more about lives rebuilt than lives destroyed. It is a testimony to the resiliency of the human spirit. Like Schindler's List (which was directed by The Last Days' executive producer, Steven Spielberg), this movie shows another facet of the century's darkest tale, keeping it alive and vivid.
For The Last Days, Moll has interviewed five survivors of Hitler's "Final Solution," all of whom currently live in the United States. He accompanies these Hungarian Jews as they return to the land of their birth, searching for closure and catharsis. Seeking solutions to unanswerable questions, they also visit the locations of their most nightmarish recollections -- the remains of Auschwitz and Berkenow. And they bring their children and grandchildren with them, entrusting memories of their experiences, as well as something more tangible than words, to future generations.
In 1944, even as the tide of the war was turning against him, Hitler diverted resources from the army to the SS, so that the extermination of the Jews could continue. In the end, he was more concerned about eradicating a race than defeating the Allies. As one historian puts it, Germany was fighting two wars: "a military war and a war of the SS directed against the Jews." In his last will and testament, Hitler urged that his followers fight to keep the sanctions against the Jews in place.
The most prominent of the five subjects interviewed in Moll's film is U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos, who was part of the Jewish underground in Hungary. He, along with many others, worked to provide fake Swedish passports for Jews seeking to escape from a homeland that had turned rank and deadly. Until he was captured and taken to a concentration camp, Bill Basch was also a member of the Resistance. His most telling memory is of the day the Americans liberated the camp -- how the former prisoners literally tore some of their captors to pieces. Alice Lok Cahana, an artist who paints as a way to memorialize the dead, returns to Europe to make peace with her ghosts. Renee Firestone goes back to Auschwitz to uncover details about her sister's death, even going so far as to question Dr. Hans Munch, the doctor in charge of the section of the camp where her sister was held. (Munch was acquitted of war crimes on the grounds that he used medical experimentation as a means to keep Jews alive.) Finally, Irene Zisblatt tells a moving tale about the diamonds she now wears on a tear-shaped pendant. They are the only tangible momento she has of a mother who did not survive the ordeal.
These five have remarkably similar stories. They tell of how, in the beginning, they did not flee Hungary because they could not accept that the atrocities happening throughout Europe would be repeated in their homeland. In Lantos' words, "We had patriotic feelings that Hungarians didn't do that sort of thing." They ask the same questions as each other: "Why did I survive? Why did God spare me?" And they strive through their actions to ensure that not only is the Holocaust remembered, but that people generations removed from the tragedy continue to understand what happened and work towards the betterment of human rights worldwide. They are not victims; they are survivors.
While much of the archival footage presented in The Last Days is new, the substance is familiar. These are the kinds of images that no Holocaust film can ignore, because they drive home the horror of what transpired five decades ago, half a world away. For added impact, Moll interviews a handful of American servicemen who participated in the liberation of Dachow. What they saw and experienced there, they will never forget. They called the confined Jews "the walking dead," and one film clip in particular - a startlingly well-preserved color shot of several naked, emaciated ex-prisoners walking away from the camera --makes it clear how apropos that label was.
Perhaps the only disheartening thing about The Last Days is limited the audience will be. Few (if any) will leave this film unmoved and unaffected, yet the viewership will be orders of magnitude less than a fraudulently powerful major motion picture like Patch Adams. To October Films' credit, they are giving this movie a wider distribution than is normally accorded to documentaries, but, even for art houses, this is a business, and if a film does not generate revenue at the box office, it will be gone. So my recommendation is to see this film while the opportunity is there. For, while The Last Days surely deserves a long afterlife on video and television, since it is a documentary, there are no guarantees where or when it will next see the light of day.
© 1999 James Berardinelli