I wanted very much for this to be interesting and factual, and to have a heart; but I found it a bit of a mess.
Lots of shouting and swearing are no substitute for depicting the intended substance of the film, which is the difficulties encountered by the production team in Israel, and their "artistic" conflicts in making the filming of the trial "popular" to get good audience figures in-primarily-the USA. I also found some of the performances rather mannered and wearying.
It's not particularly factual either. In particular, the mention of the shameful deportations of children by the French (to Auschwitz) are interposed with very well-known footage of starving children in the Warsaw Ghetto; one reviewer here in these pages has apparently been mislead as he mentions that the people bulldozing in piles of bodies will be the next to be disposed of-absolute nonsense-that footage is of the British soldiers having to deal with the conditions discovered at Belsen. OK-this may be nitpicking over what was a ghastly period of history, but for those of us who have been immersed for decades in studying this history, one expects more from a modern production.
I watched this on London Live freeview channel in the UK-the soundtrack was rather difficult to follow and necessitated putting the volume way up, without much improvement-for me anyway, I'm afraid.
There's a potentially terrific film waiting to be made of this trial (to follow on from-to mention at random-"The House on Garibaldi Street", "Judgment at Nuremberg"...); but this isn't it.
Lots of shouting and swearing are no substitute for depicting the intended substance of the film, which is the difficulties encountered by the production team in Israel, and their "artistic" conflicts in making the filming of the trial "popular" to get good audience figures in-primarily-the USA. I also found some of the performances rather mannered and wearying.
It's not particularly factual either. In particular, the mention of the shameful deportations of children by the French (to Auschwitz) are interposed with very well-known footage of starving children in the Warsaw Ghetto; one reviewer here in these pages has apparently been mislead as he mentions that the people bulldozing in piles of bodies will be the next to be disposed of-absolute nonsense-that footage is of the British soldiers having to deal with the conditions discovered at Belsen. OK-this may be nitpicking over what was a ghastly period of history, but for those of us who have been immersed for decades in studying this history, one expects more from a modern production.
I watched this on London Live freeview channel in the UK-the soundtrack was rather difficult to follow and necessitated putting the volume way up, without much improvement-for me anyway, I'm afraid.
There's a potentially terrific film waiting to be made of this trial (to follow on from-to mention at random-"The House on Garibaldi Street", "Judgment at Nuremberg"...); but this isn't it.