Saw Night and Fog, a fairly heavy film essay about the holocaust that lasts about half an hour but feels much longer. It contains a lot of archival and newly shot footage of the death camps, with a narrator speaking over it. At times the narration is ironical and stark, at other times almost despairing of this project, feeling like a DVD commentary: "we are slowly following these tracks, what do we hope to find?" "we can show you only the surface of what happened here." Indeed, the footage and the facts, we are all somewhat familiar with, but the reality was far more harrowing than we can understand or imagine.
The narrator starts the film pointing out the the irony of the banal and common details of the camps. Some are constructed like garages, we are told, others like stadiums. Architects and surveyors were involved, everything so dry, so calm. The banality of evil. As the film progresses, we are told of the strange make-believe society in the camps - there were hospitals and prisons, bordellos and (in some) even zoos and greenhouses. As the film goes on, we see fresh, healthy prisoners juxtaposed with skeletal long-timers. Puzzles and knots of chests and limbs lying in snow and dirt. It's very upsetting.
The film was apparently made as a commentary on the then-current invasion of Algiers by the French and of course today the message of vigilance against genocide and mass murder is as unfortunately salient as ever. We have a montage of prison guards, workers, and politicians all denying responsibility.
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