Hi everyone!
Keith Lyons is back with another film involving Nazis, probably too soon after his review last week for “Never Look Away” (Episode #431). I really hope we can find a heartwarming film for him to review here at some point. Be sure to check out his other reviews for “Shoplifters” (Episode #394), “The Wife” (Episode #403), “Mirai” (Episode #408), and “Capernaum” (Episode #416).
Here we go!
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Hi, Philly Film Fan here with another review for One Movie Punch. You can follow me on Twitter at PhillyFilmFan.
Today’s movie is “The Photographer of Mauthausen”, the film directed by Mar Targarona and written by Roger Danès and Alfred Pérez Fargas. It is a docudrama about Spanish refugees who were imprisoned in a concentration camp and their attempts to document Nazi atrocities.
No spoilers.
During the Spanish Civil War the Second Spanish Republic was overthrown by General Franco’s Nationalist forces with aid from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. After his victory, Franco expelled many of the Republicans who opposed him, along with their Anarchist and Communist allies. “The Photographer of Mauthausen” is about a group of these refugees who settled in France in 1939, only to be captured by the Nazis after the German invasion. These Communists were taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria where they were used as slave labor, particularly in a nearby granite quarry.
Mario Casas plays Francisco Boix, a Spanish Communist who is put to work in a photography lab within the concentration camp. There he serves under Paul Ricken (Richard van Weyden), an SS officer who uses his position to explore his photography hobby. Ricken seems to pride himself on treating the prisoners better than his fellow SS officers, but the film offers him no absolution for this token effort. As the war comes to a close, Commandant Franz Ziereis (Stefan Weinert) orders that all photographs of Nazi war crimes be destroyed, lest they fall into Allied hands. Francisco learns of this plot and decides that he must find a way to preserve the evidence of the atrocities that were committed at Mauthausen, even if it means risking his life and the lives of his friends.
Mauthausen was the last concentration camp to be liberated. Hitler had already been dead for five days by the time Allied forces arrived at its gates. Today, much of the camp is still standing and the Mauthausen Museum serves as a memorial to the victims of the Nazi regime. When I was in Austria, I was able to visit the site and it was a powerful experience. I learned things that I can never forget such as how, before the gas chamber was built, SS officers would load prisoners into the back of a truck, attach a tube from the exhaust pipe to the backend, and then drive around until all the prisoners had asphyxiated. This is a detail that is featured in the film but it doesn’t quite convey the horror of the situation.
There are a lot of great films about the Holocaust and many more not so great movies about the Holocaust. “The Photographer of Mauthausen” is competently made and tells a story most people won’t be familiar with, but it falls short of being a masterpiece. If you’re interested in learning about history, “The Photographer of Mauthausen” offers a compelling story you probably haven’t heard before. But, ultimately, this film lacks the emotional resonance that the subject deserves.
Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
Metacritic: NR
One Movie Punch: 6.0/10
“The Photographer of Mauthausen” (2018) is rated TV-MA and is currently streaming on Netflix.
This jawn was brought to you by Philly Film Fan. For more movie reviews, follow me on Twitter at PhillyFilmFan where I’m participating in the #365Movies challenge. That’s P-H-I-L-L-Y-F-I-L-M-F-A-N.
