The Holocaust: Resnais' Nuit et Brouillard
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At the end of director Alain ResnaisÆ Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog), the documentary-like filmÆs narrator contends: ôAt the moment I speak to you, the icy water of the ponds and ruins is filling up the hollows of the channel house. A water as cold and murky as our own bad memories. War is napping, but with one eye always open.ö Providing viewers with a touristÆs eye-view of the site of the unspeakable atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps, the film mimics a documentary by using black-and-white photos of concentration camp horrors intercut with color footage of the camps a decade after their liberation. Based on a biographical book called SchindlerÆs Ark, by Thomas Keneally, director Steven SpielbergÆs SchindlerÆs List provides exposure of the horrors of the Holocaust through the personal story of Schindler. At the end of the film, titles tell us that ôThere are fewer than four thousand Jews left alive in Poland today. There are more than six thousand descendants of the Schindler Jewsö (Spielberg). Both films provide a different approach in exposing the horrors and inhumanity of the Holocaust, but each suggests in its own way that such an atrocity may occur in future if each individual does not recognize his or her responsibility in ensuring it does not. ôNever forget,ö has long been a mantra of the Jewish international community with respect to ensuring the suffering and deaths of more than six million Jews during the Holocau
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e the Holocaust through the redemptive story of Oskar Schindler. SchindlerÆs munitions employees have a chance to escape the Nazi death machines. The film often contrasts images of the worst inhumanity and brutality with those of overwhelming compassion and morality. At one point, when the brutal commandant Amon Goeth orders a Jew shot, the woman pleas, ôIÆm only trying to do my job!ö (Spielberg). Goeth immediately replies without human compassion, ôJa, IÆm doing mineö (Spielberg). Contrasted with such scenes are the compassion of men like Itzhak Stern and Schindler, who both risk their lives to help others. At one point Schindler tries to impart a degree of humanity and morality to the evil Goeth, ôPower is when we have every justification to kill, and we donÆtö (Spielberg). Such contrasting depictions of the human capacity for both good and evil are meant to reinforce that it is individual choice to act on good or evil.
The theme of individual responsibility as a means of ensuring such atrocities of the Holocaust will never again occur is reinforced in Night and Fog by a number of techniques. The title of the film, the deceivingly stable appearance of peace and order, and the tendency of human beings to forget tragedy as
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1521
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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