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The ghost of Claude Lanzmann, whose enormous Shoah continues to be a nonparallel film text of the Holocaust, lingered over and surrounding Luke Holland’s “last account.” It is said in a title card that his purpose was to identify and question the last “Third Reich witnesses” surviving. More than testimonies he found, but argumentative perpetrators.
The film starts with Primo Levi’s well-known quote: “Monsters are there, but the numbers are too few to be really harmful. The common guys, the officials willing to believe and act without asking questions, are more dangerous.” And soon, an old man singing a song on the soundtrack was translated into subtitles from the German: ‘Put the long clothes to go into the bowels of the Jew.’ The topic of this interview is startled and shocked that he has been taught to sing as a child. Other former and elder Hitler Youth are seldom so overwhelmed.
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Holland introduces his subjects in a quasi-breakneck style to the first portion of the film and alternates their reminiscences with archive material. One respondent speaks about his dad and his mother who voted for Hitler, and quotes “unemployment and inflation”. An old lady, Marianne Chantelau, starts with a defensive remark. “We were 11, what are you going to do?” Also, you must try to play this Final Account quiz.
This isn’t an issue. We too need such documentaries and the attitude of Holland is generally good. However, the issue when watching such an interview tape is to ask everything: Why did they agree to participate? Can we read in their eyes anything other than what they say? Therefore, are the people who accept a certain amount of guilt the “good?” This type of questioning of words and images is just as crucial – and even more infrequently discussed – as the issue of guilt. Of course, the editing does some, like when photos of fires in a synagogue are now opposite to Governor Herbert Fuchs during Kristallnacht, remembering that he was utterly indifferent to the appalling devastation of that night. Maybe the documentary is overburdening to anticipate more.
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Holland begins by singing an anti-semitic song with a montage of old individuals whose tunes are similar to the Dutch “Happy Birthday” kit. This is an effective start and highlights one of the main elements of the film: The sights and sounds of childhood, its jingles and playgrounds remain with us, and everything is blended when it’s overshadowed by racial and nationalist propaganda. The oldest individual interviewed was 19 when the Nazis took the power but most of them were younger; of course, they are happy with nostalgia for their experiences of the summer camps. “Ah yes, singing and marching together were so nice,” to quote one woman’s memory.
Or you are aware that the 71-year-old filmmaker was fighting terminal Cancer while he ran to wrap up his film (he passed away several months in July 2020 before the Venice Film Festival premiere). The “end” highlights his last attempt to capture this testimony, and we must suppose that the title is not by chance uncomfortable with its “final solution.” The ‘account,’ however, can be archived and held accountable in two ways. The chronology of these interviews is not obvious but just the sense of the time, the enemy of all biographers. However, the documentary seems deliberate to be based in particular on two late-act witnesses. He isn’t the only person who appears unwilling to recognize it. He’s the one who’s just telling it loudly.
Why do you think it was wrong to “stand up for the country?” It turns into a shouting confrontation and you know quickly how Holland felt so urgent to capture the feelings of this older generation on film. And the concluding notion of the Final Account is: it can never happen again, never.
For more personality quizzes check this: Luca Quiz.
