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| Allan Corduner and Kamelia Grigorova in The Grey Zone |
Cast: David Arquette, Michael Stuhlbarg, Daniel Benzali, Allan Corduner, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Kamelia Grigorova, Mira Sorvino, Natasha Lyonne, Jessica Hecht, Brian F. O'Byrne. Screenplay: Tim Blake Nelson, based on his play and a book by Miklos Nyiszli. Cinematography: Russell Lee Fine. Production design: Maria Djukovic. Film editing: Michelle Botticelli, Tim Blake Nelson.
In basing his film (originally a play) on the memoirs of Miklos Nyiszli, a Jewish physician who aided Josef Mengele in his hideous experiments at Auschwitz, Tim Blake Nelson makes one grave mistake. Instead of making Nyiszli the focus of the film, he chooses to scatter the narrative among others imprisoned at the death camp. One of the strengths of Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993) was its use of Oskar Schindler as a pivotal figure, and Son of Saul (László Nemes, 2015), a much better film about the Sonderkommandos, the Jews who did the dirty work for the Nazis at the camps, is centered on the dilemma of one man. The Grey Zone remains a harrowing film, but it's easy to get lost as it shifts from the discovery of a girl found alive in one of the gas chambers to the plotting that results in the destruction of one of the crematoria.
