Au nom de tous les miens

Some passages are among the most inspiring documentaries about the sheer depravity of the Holocaust, and the entire section in the concentration camp exudes a naturalistic effect comparable only to a small handful of actual video footage or survivors' accounts. But the film has immeasurable ambitions and tries to cover half of the protagonist's life, gradually switching rather disorderly between different formal and narrative stages and failing to hold the viewer's attention enough to justify its overlong 140 minutes. Still, I would have rather appreciated its historical and purely moral value if it wasn’t for that insanely forced ending, which in its tone and execution seems to have been cut from a completely different film. Great intentions unfortunately drowned in a jumble of great filmmaking efforts, some of which work brilliantly while others make it impossible to connect to the story in a fully empathetic way. Such a shame. (2018.04.19)