Getting Away with Murder(s)

A strikingly ambitious documentary tackles the Holocaust, the military trials at Nuremberg and beyond.

The key fact that needs to be stated about this film is that it finds its creator David Nicholas Wilkinson carrying on where the great Claude Lanzmann left off. Lanzmann, who died in 2018, is best remembered for his astonishing 1985 documentary Shoah, a work over nine hours long and unquestionably one of the best documentaries ever made about the Holocaust. Exceptional too was the way in which Lanzmann largely devoted his filmmaking career to that subject returning to it again and again (even his final work, a TV documentary series entitled The Four Sisters, dealt with that theme). Given the hours for which Lanzmann studied the Holocaust on film, it might have been assumed that he had said the last word on the subject, but Getting Away with Murder(s) shows twice over that there is still fresh ground to be covered.

Wilkinson’s film starts with footage about Auschwitz blending reminiscences by two survivors, Arek Hersh and Kitty Hart-Moxon, with scenes of Wilkinson himself talking to the tour guide Lukasz Lipinski on the spot. Even here the details that emerge from what is said and from the historical images incorporated include some unfamiliar aspects (and we should, of course, never forget that some of the younger generation may be relatively unaware of what the Holocaust entailed). In any case, the film moves on to concern itself first with the trial of leading Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg undertaken in 1945 and thereafter to consider what happened subsequently to those who had been involved in carrying out Hitler’s extermination programme. Thus it becomes clear that Wilkinson is entering fresh but related territory.

To achieve this the film ranges far beyond Germany incorporating scenes in such places as Vienna, Prague, Lithuania, London and Yorkshire. As it proceeds the film’s key subject becomes the issue of tracking down and prosecuting those who, despite being involved in the genocide, escaped punishment. The history revealed in this film brings out the different attitudes on this question that have been held over time and in different countries. What is unquestionable is that many who were guilty were never found and prosecuted, while others who were sentenced to long-term imprisonment at Nuremberg served a relatively short part of their term. Throughout the film there are neatly inserted miniature profiles of such names: in each case a picture of the person appears on the screen while Eileen Atkins in voice-over gives us a few key facts about them including their eventual fate. In addition, there are detailed well-informed comments in new interviews with historians, experts, writers and others, among them Dr Dan Plesch, Mary Fulbrook, Winfried Garscha and Philip Rubenstein.

David Wilkinson doesn’t seek to dominate his contributors even though he is a regular presence and at times a voice-over commentator. However, while he is a man of many parts (producer, film distributor, writer, actor and lecturer among them) he has since 2015 established himself as a director of documentary features and in the three he has made to date (prior to this one we had The First Film about Britain’s early film history and 2018’s Postcards from the 48%, a deeply-felt warning about the perils of Brexit) there is always a sense that he is passionate about his subject. This time around, he is a crusader for a cause: it is fully apparent that he believes that the Nazi war crimes were so unforgivable that he is aghast at the fact that so few of those responsible have been tracked down and punished. This is a film that has no time for arguments that what was done was too long ago to matter now and that the perpetrators, if still alive, are so old that pursuing them any longer is misguided. Wilkinson clearly resents it that statutes of limitations can prevent fresh prosecutions.

Leaving such issues aside for a moment, Getting Away with Murder(s) stands up as fluent filmmaking with good marks for the colour photography (Don McVey) and the controlled use of suitable music (Christopher Barnett). However, I am not convinced that letting the film run for almost three hours is a good thing: more is not always more. When making The Four Sisters at the end of his career, Lanzmann made such close detailed studies of the four women concerned that the series had real weight. Here the last hour runs the risk of too many sequences briefly touching on a whole series of somewhat comparable incidents. The film succeeds when it revisits the Holocaust directly to remind us that the extremity of what was done should never be forgotten, but relative repetition of similar incidents briefly evoked lessens the impact rather than expanding it. For that matter, the one documentary about the Holocaust that matches Shoah, the 1956 Night and Fog by Alain Resnais lasted only 32 minutes. Wilkinson must be aware of that film and one wonders if the deliberately quiet tone in which from time to time he expresses his anger is a conscious echo of the devastating impact achieved by Resnais in just that way.

But, if I am sometimes critical of the approach adopted especially as regards length, Getting Away with Murder(s) is patently worthwhile, not just for opening up a subject to those audiences ignorant of the Holocaust but for capturing the authentic voices of those aged but still commanding who can still give direct testimony (not least one remembers the contribution by Benjamin Ferencz, the one surviving prosecutor who was involved in the Nuremberg trial). Even if some viewers will resist some of the points made, the film provides meat for discussion on such issues as whether or not pursuing elderly war criminals is a matter of timeless justice as opposed to being for some a quest for vengeance. We come to recognise what David Wilkinson thinks about that and his belief in this respect appears to be the reason why he had to make this film. Late on, however, an additional concern emerges. The film quotes the words spoken at Nuremberg by the American Chief of Counsel, Robert Jackson, to the effect that the statesmen of all nations must be as fully accountable as everyone else. On hearing that, you realise that this film speaks not just about the past, important though that is, but also about the lack of justice to be found around the world today. That is an equal part of its message. Three years in the making, the effort was eminently justified.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Featuring  Dan Plesch, Philip Rubenstein, Axel Fischer, Mary Fulbrook, Winfried Garscha, Arek Hersh, Kitty Hart-Moxon, Robin Lustig, Jens Rommel, Stephen Ankier, Benjamin Ferencz, Lukasz Lipinski, David Nicholas Wilkinson, and the voices of Eileen Atkins and Julian Glover.

Dir David Nicholas Wilkinson, Pro David Nicholas Wilkinson, Screenplay David Nicholas Wilkinson and Emlyn Price, Ph Don McVey, Ed Jon Walker, Music Christopher Barnett.

Guerilla Docs/Aegis Trust/JoJo Films/Ilyce and Neil Phillip/Aziz McMahon-Guerilla Films.
175 mins. UK. 2021. Rel: 1 October 2021. Cert. 15.