Reflection on a Documentary Night and Fog by Alain Resnais - Essay Example

Reflection Paper On A Documentary "Night And Fog" (1955) Directed By Alain Resnais Genocide is a very emotional topic to discuss, especially after the infamous holocaust and the Rwandan genocide that were committed in Europe and Africa respectively. Several movies and books have been written and produced to illustrate the negative effects of genocide. Night and Fog, directed by Alain Resnais, is one of my favorite movies discussing genocide as one of its main themes. Despite the film being very short and simple, it still has the ability to bring out fearful and anxious emotions from any person watching it. The film combines both images and narrated stories to unveil a great deal of evidence of atrocities that were committed in Europe in the 1940s as part of discrimination against particular groups of individuals. Genocide is therefore a central theme in the film and the infamous holocaust and anti-Semitism, as well as other inhumane treatments in the detention camps, have been used as examples to illustrate the effects of this crime. Genocide can be defined as the systematic and deliberate destruction of a group of individuals on the basis of their ethnic origin, religion, tribe, race, caste or nationality. The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of t5he Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) in 1948 described genocide a deliberate crime that involves killing, causing mental and physical harm as well as inflicting on the conditions of life of a group or part of it based on nationality, ethnicity or race. Genocide is a crime punishable in international law. In this essay, I will reflect on the concept of genocide and the film, Night and Fog, as well as other issues expressed in the film. The film details a very contemplative, moving and emotional account of the situation in the Nazi concentration camps. I concur with film critic Francois Truffaut that the short documentary film is one of the greatest movies ever made. After watching, Night and Fog, I firmly support the need for international regulation of genocide. The international community needs to come together and establish stringent laws and regulations that can prevent events such as the holocaust from reoccurring. Individuals and governments or any other groups supporting, financing or orchestrating the mass killing of individuals as a way of discriminating against their group for one reason or the other ought to be brought to book and forced to face justice. The emotions expressed in the short film Night and Fog, are too much for one to bear, let alone to witness such events unfolding in real life. I hail the director of the documentary, Alain Resnais, for detailing such events in a classical film that even future generations will look at and regret actions committed by other human beings. I felt the general mood of the film was bleak, disturbing and thought provoking. I also think the approach taken by the documentary in explaining the series of events is very realistic, solemn and serious. This helps the film to delve in to details of the incident, enough to give viewers a reality check on how bad human nature can get if not controlled. In my opinion, the documentary is a masterpiece and classical. The film is very much relevant today as it was when it first came out. I would recommend the documentary to any individual fascinated by history and past events as well as international crimes and anyone who is interested in finding out the truth about the Nazi Rule in Germany. The film documents history lesson of utmost significance using a masterful and stylistic approach to deal with the horrible subject of genocide and the holocaust. However, before one sits down to watch the film, I would advise them to be fully prepared to go through the difficult, albeit an invaluable experience. The film, despite being only 31 minutes long, tells a long story of past injustices and crimes that had been committed in Europe in the mid 1940s. The documentary is set in Poland and follows back on victims of the infamous holocaust which occurred ten years before the film was produced. I personally consider the movie a classic based on its production and storyline. The fact that the documentary is only as short as half an hour allowed the production team to focus only on important matters unlike most of the long films about the Nazi rule. The documentary focuses on three main issues. The first part of the documentary describes the ideology of the Nazi movement and its rise to be such an influential and strong movement across Europe. The next part of the film showcases the sadism that was inflicted on the inmates in the detention camps including being subjected to torture, prostitution and scientific experimentation. This last part is very emotional and graphical. Black and white images are used in this last part to show piles of bodies of victims of the Nazi rule, the gas chambers that were used during the holocaust. The film ends with a sense of liberation whereby the horrific scenes of the camps are discovered and the truth finally comes to light. The documentary concludes by questioning the person responsible for these atrocities that displayed the cruelest part of our human nature. The thirty one minutes of the film are enough for the narrator to take us through the details of construction of the Nazi camps, the extent of the genocide and inhumane conditions in the concentration camps and finally the liberation of the people after the defeat of the Nazi movement and finally the situation of abandoned and decaying camps as they were ten years later in 1955. One of the most astonishing revelations that I learnt from the film is the fact that the German firms competed amongst themselves to win contracts for designing the concentration camps. It is quite surprising how the companies saw a business opportunity in the construction of camps that would be used to commit crimes against humanity. It hurt me to learn that various companies earned a lot of profits off the designing and construction of the concentration camps. It is very sad that some people utilized their ingenuity in ensuring efficiency of the extermination process by constructing gas chambers and disguising them as hygiene facilities as well as adding crematoriums in them. These and more shocking facts are expressly revealed in the documentary. Another scene from the documentary that I found very disturbing was the one where an old man dying helplessly whiles his eyes are still open. There were also very moving images of dead bodies, piles of women hair, human bones that have been turned in to fertilizer. The documentary also brings out evidence of experimentation on human beings with phosphorus as well as castration of male. There are also pictures of the remaining properties of prisoners and detainees in the concentration camps. The scariest scene for me in the whole film however is the part where bulldozers are used to drug human bodies of different sizes for mass burial in one grave. I was also overwhelmed by the contrasted that was used in the film where black and white images taken during the war period were juxtaposed with colored images of the current state of the camps as they were in 1955. Such a contrast arouses deep thinking on how things can change given the strange scene where there is grass growing all over the camps covering places that were once used to host innocent detainees as the awful events fade in to history. The narrator of the documentary, Michael Bouquet is very effective in bringing out the details of the events as they unfolded. His narration skills are very instrumental in helping the film achieve its main objective of trying to uncover the reality of the Nazi Rule by following up on the survivors of the detention camps. The script writer, Jean Cayrol, was himself a survivor from the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. This fact is very instrumental as it helps us get the story from the real individuals who were targeted during the crimes committed by the Nazi movement. Cayrol had published several poems about the Nazi rule in 1946. I understand that the poems formed a great part in informing storyline of the documentary. While watching the film, I got lost emotionally due to the background music and the graphical images that were very disturbing at times. The music for the documentary was composed by Hanns Eisler. The use of still images in the documentary also helps one to get the real images as they happened at the time. Despite being very short, Night and Fog still stands out from among many documentaries and films that were created before and after it, which attempt to demystify the Nazi Rule. Nigh and Fog stands out for its simplicity, the use of real images that most of the people who were around at that time would easily recognize and also for the fact that it fails to shift political blame on any individuals that were responsible for the crimes against humanity. I personally feel like the documentary goes a step beyond just admitting that crimes were committed by letting the viewers get the real evidence of the crimes and letting the viewers to debate amongst themselves on who was politically responsible. The fact that the documentary was shot only a decade after the dreadful events gives the future generations like us to get an overview of the events and feel the reality of the suffering that innocent, law abiding citizens suffered during this time. This gives us the opportunity to appreciate that despite such crimes existing in the fictional realm of movies in the contemporary world; they were actually committed in reality and are still being committed in present day albeit in different forms such as discriminative and oppressive laws in some countries. There is a host of other production values that I feel make the documentary one of the best films when documentaries are concerned. Posing questions rather than the use of emotional words throughout the film enables us as viewers to contemplate on the issues touched upon in the film. I must also praise the film’s script. The script is seductively calm and adopts a matter-of-fact tone throughout the documentary. After watching this short, emotionally disturbing, and though provoking documentary, I have a good idea of the Nazi rule in Germany and the surrounding countries in Europe. I now fully understand the issues of genocide and discrimination to that extent based on any ideology and I hope the rest of humanity has learnt lessons from the past events such as the holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. Such awful events should never reoccur. Works Cited Bolton G. Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development. London: Paul Chapman Publishers; 2001. Read More