Movie: "Occupied City"
Review by K G Kline
"City of Hope and Horror"
British director Steve McQueen is no stranger to films depicting death, suffering, and mankind's descent into its lowest and most base acts of cruelty. His first film, "Hunger" depicted the tragedy of 1980's hunger strikes by captured IRA soldiers. His masterpiece, "12 Years A Slave" won the 2013 Academy Award for Best Picture with its brutal, never-flinching depiction of slavery in 19th-century America, making McQueen the first black director to win Best Picture. McQueen's films are meant to challenge the viewer to look at, and not turn away from, the horrors mankind can inflict upon itself when given the chance. All this makes McQueen's latest film something of a paradox.
"Occupied City' is a four-and-a-half-hour documentary about the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam between 1940 and 1945, much of it focused on the murder and deportation of Amsterdam's Jews. The film juxtaposes historical narration over modern-day footage captured with anonymous and sometimes concealed cameras in and around Amsterdam between 2020 until 2023. For a director who built his reputation on films that graphically depict death and brutality, the decision to show only benign and mundane footage of people going about their daily routines is a huge departure. In the 1940's the citizens of Amsterdam were subject to the all the horrors of Nazi occupation. Enough photographs exist to show this. McQueen's decision not to show it was not a good one.
At its core "Occupied City" is an archeological expedition into the locations in Amsterdam where the most significant acts of resistance and deportation occurred. McQueen acts as tour guide, assisted by a crisp and emotionless narration, taking us from address to address to show exactly where each event happened. In one location an elderly Jewish couple who fled Germany in the 1930's committed suicide upon hearing the news of the Dutch surrender. Another was used by dozens of Jews daily while moving from one safe house to another. We see a mansion that housed a German officer responsible for deporting thousands of Jews to Auschwitz, including Anne Frank. In another, a well-known homosexual fashion designer manufactured false documents and participated in acts of resistance, He was executed, defiantly wearing a pink shirt. This goes on for over 240 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission.
At some point McQueen had to make a decision to either make his documentary in the style of Ken Burn's "The Civil War,” using historical photographs and archival footage to show the faces and locations as they looked during the Nazi occupation, or instead to make the film using contemporary footage of the same locations as they look today. McQueen chose the latter in an ambitious attempt to connect modern events to historical ones to demonstrate the cyclic nature of history. That's a tough act to pull off, and there are many times when it simply doesn't work. In one location we hear about a union strike that shut down the trains carrying Jews to the concentration camps. The narrator tells us that only one photo exists of the protests, McQueen doesn't show it.
While filming "Occupied City" McQueen unwittingly became a documentary cameraman himself. When filming began in 2020 The Netherlands were under COVID-19 lockdown. Amsterdam's citizens were under police-enforced curfews and travel restrictions. The city's police were everywhere, ensuring that people didn't congregate, travel, or act in ways that could spread the virus. Early in production McQueen seized upon the shutdowns to make an ill-advised connection between the COVID-19 lockdowns and the curfews, checkpoints, and restrictions imposed by the Nazis in WWII. We hear the narrator describing a square where defiant anti-Nazi protests took place in 1942 while showing contemporary footage of COVID deniers and anti-vaxxers protesting on the same site in 2020. McQueen apparently got caught up in the history unfolding before him, ignorant that such a comparison would seem shameful in 2024. Thankfully, both the COVID lockdowns, and McQueen's' fascination with them, end before intermission.
Amid the hundred or more street addresses depicted, McQueen does give "Occupied City" something of a climax. The sites visited early in the film are mostly the homes of Jews arrested then sent to the "Jewish Theater" or the notorious Huis van Bewaring prison. McQueen mentions those destinations repeatedly throughout the film but saves his visits to them for the film's fourth and final hour. Unfortunately, footage of high school students emptying their lockers while the narrator describes acts of torture and executions only serves as a finale for McQueen's failed attempt to bridge the two eras.
For such an ambitious and personal project, "Occupied City" fails in its attempt to connect 20th and 21st century events, mostly because it would be impossible to find the tragedy and suffering its citizens endured under Nazi occupation anywhere in today's Amsterdam, COVID included. It also fails to generate the emotional reaction that any Holocaust film must instill if it's to serve as a warning for the future. All that lovely footage of Dutch canals and stunning architecture is simply too distracting for the horrific narration to sink in. There were times when I was so entertained by the Dutch cityscapes I missed the narration completely. That's probably my mind seeking an escape from the horrors of war, but in any case, it's a 180 degree turn from a director who showed us the ugliness of slavery a decade ago and won an Oscar for it Those interested in Dutch or Holocaust history will find "Occupied City" educational, but most viewers can leave at intermission and not miss much.