Cady's Take:

The script is balanced with the three levels of the concentration camp. There are the Hungarian men Sonderkommandos, who are trying to put together a rebellion, there are the women involved that are hiding gun powder, and then there is Dr. Nyiszli, who is constantly being hounded by the Nazi General (Harvey Keitel) to tell him of what he hears of the uprising. As Sonderkommandos inside a Nazi concentration camp, they have been forced to escort their fellow Jews into the gas chambers, burn the corpses and dispose of the ashes. In exchange, they receive a comfortable living, with plenty of food and wine and fresh linens on their beds. But they know that soon their four-month period will be over and they will be executed like the rest.

The film is somewhat told through the historical character of Dr. Milkos Nyiszli (Corduner), who was a assistant to the grotesque medical experiments ordered by the Nazis in exchange for his life and the lives of his family. The film is aptly named for the moral divides and the choices that those inside the camp are forced to confront as they struggle to survive. Hoffman (David Arquette) and Abramowics (Steve Buscemi) lead this group of Sonderkommando.

The Polish section of the camp wants to delay the uprising a little longer, to allow more time for planning. The Hungarians want to begin as soon as possible so as to save more lives. The two factions also begin to disagree over their goal. From the beginning, they planned to destroy the ovens, thus slowing down the slaughter of the prisoners. But Abramowics is now entertaining the idea of escape. When they find a young girl still breathing on the bottom of a pile of dead bodies in the death chamber, they instantly decide to save her life. But they fear the consequences that their choice may have on their pending revolt.

The Grey Zone feeds our senses with the chilling sights and sounds from within the camp to create a completely numbing experience. Nelson allows his camera to roam freely through the action, enabling our senses to absorb the painfully honest emotion of those on death row. In effect, we’re made prisoners ourselves. This movie was very hard to watch and even harder to rate. Although I thought that the film was touching I found it difficult to view it in its entirety, and by the end I could tell there would be no tears of joy streaming down my cheeks only tears of sorrow and horror.

Unless you have a very strong stomach I suggest you leave this one on the shelf.

Rarely does one encounter a movie that is both beautiful and horrific; that illuminates the idea that morality and survival are often mutually exclusive. “The Grey Zone” tells the story of an uprising at Auschwitz during WWII orchestrated by Jewish prisoners known as the Sonderkommandos who, in exchange for assisting the Nazi extermination of Jews, earn food, cigarettes, and wine and an extra four months of life, until they too are executed and a new unit appointed. The four months are almost up and the Sonderkommandos are preparing to execute a long-planned revolt. We are shown the moral deadlock these Jews encounter as they struggle to reconcile their desire to live with the acts they have committed against their own people, and what that means for their souls as they prepare to die in the uprising.

The performances are riveting and the subject matter more than simply compelling; the story is not one about the Holocaust or concentration camps, or the Nazi extermination of Jews. “The Grey Zone” asks many questions that reach beyond storyline: How far are we willing to go to survive? Can survival be considered a moral justification for committing crimes against humanity? These men are proud to have survived and sickened at the ways in which they went about doing it. The uprising is compromised when a young Jewish girl survives the gassing and the Sonderkommandos attempt to both save her life and detonate the crematoriums.

There is no happy ending in “The Grey Zone” – at no time in the movie from beginning to end are we as the viewer to experience happiness, a glimmer of light or hope that some good came of this fight for survival. Each time the viewer thinks the moral dilemma is revealed, a new layer is added and we must ask again “What would I do?” However this is as it should be because no good, no glimmer of light or hope was available in these camps and a movie with such an ending would leave me feeling underestimated. “The Grey Zone” is dark, disturbing, even depressing but it is at all times essential in its characters and dialogue.