Mark Reviews Movies: SOBIBOR

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 28, 2019

Early into Sobibor, director Konstantin Khabenskiy breaks one of the unspoken rules in making a movie about the Holocaust, and we're reminded why it's important. He shows a group of women, undressing and marching toward a shower, and as the doors close and lock, Khabenskiy doesn't stop the scene. Instead, his camera hovers above the women, huddled together and not suspecting what's to come next.

This is about as far as any sensible filmmaker would be willing to go in a depiction of the mass murder of helpless people—one group of the millions who were murdered in such a way in extermination camps, located mostly in Poland. There is no rational or honest reason to portray the sight of what happens next, just as there is no way to portray such a scene in a way that means anything significant. To be accurate with what happened in those gas chambers would be to show something beyond our conception of horror. To downplay it would be to deny the unthinkable experience of being killed in such a manner.

Khabenskiy shows the scene anyway, and he fails in the second way. The women scream as gas pours out of the nozzles. They cough and choke, and at least the director has the sense to repeatedly cut away to an SS officer, who watches this horror from a window looking into the chamber. That's the sight that matters in the telling of this story—not the details of murder but the abject inhumanity of those who thought of it, who ordered it, and who, somehow, were able to witness and live with their thoughts and actions. Khabenskiy still cuts back to the women, though, and as they fall where they stand, haunting and angelic music fills the soundtrack.

As we get further and further away from this history, as the survivors die and the stories start to seem like a barely remembered memory, one wonders if the movies on the subject of the Holocaust will either forget this unspoken rule or feel the need to remind us what happened in increasingly visceral detail. Hopefully, Khabenskiy's choices near the start of his film, which is an otherwise fine and thoughtful telling of a successful uprising at and escape from an extermination camp, can serve as a reminder of why the unspoken reasons that rule exists.

The truth is too horrifying and dehumanizing to re-create realistically, since it would only further degrade the memory of those who had to experience such dehumanizing horror. A lie of any kind in this regard is to disregard the truth in some fashion. Either choice is untenable.

One understands the thinking of showing this scene on the part of Khabenskiy and the film's screenwriters (Anna Chernakova, Michael Edelstein, and Ilya Vasiliev). This is the story of a group of prisoners in the Sobibor extermination camp, as Soviet soldiers advance and the Nazi officers in the camp gradual realize that they'll have to cover up their crimes. The fates of those women near the beginning will be fates of anyone who remains interred in the camp, unless something is done and quickly. This doesn't make the decision to show that scene any more acceptable (In fact, using it as a sort of incentive for dramatic stakes might make even more objectionable), but at least, we can comprehend Khabenskiy's thought process.

The director also plays Alexander Pechersky, known as "Sasha," a Russian officers in the Soviet Army who previously led an attempted uprising at a concentration camp. Unlike other participants, his life was spared, and he is transferred to Sobibor. The prisoners who have survived thus far have fallen into the routine of working for their captors—organizing the possessions of the dead, telling officers about items that they want, lining up for roll call and otherwise staying out of trouble. Any sign of it could lead to the random summary execution of every tenth person in the line at an assembly of prisoners.

Sasha cannot stand the inaction, but he also fears that another escape attempt could have the disastrous results of his previous one. The days pass. Sasha finds that he has some support from prisoners who were at the camp before him. As the Soviet Army nears, they realize they will have to act soon if they want a chance of survival.

The story is told well. From the perspective of the prisoners, it examines how the routine of work and near-starvation so easily turns into the sense that random abuse and murder is simply part of the same routine.

The film is perhaps most fascinating in its depiction of the SS officers (The key ones are played by Christopher Lambert, Wolfgang Cerny, Maximilian Dirr, and Philippe Reinhardt). They are not depicted as monsters but as men who have, themselves, become numb to the routine of mass murder. The inhumanity is how they continue to escalate the violence in order to feel something, leading to an almost surreal sequence of partying, abuse, and murder that has the atmosphere of a demented circus. The hatred that led to their roles at the camp is one of petty jealousy—the belief that they have been deprived of certain things because of the existence of others—which translates into them getting into trivial squabbles with their fellow officers over items stolen from their victims.

As the uprising approaches and goes forward, Sobibor becomes an examination of violence, especially in what separates the gruesome acts of the prisoners from the murders of their captors. Its climax, a slow-motion rush away from the camp in which both the living and the dead participate, reminds us that freedom is more than simply being outside some walls or fences.

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