Review: Holocaust documentary 'Engineering Evil'

THE DOCUMENTARY

"Engineering Evil"

WHEN | WHERE

Tomorrow at 9 p.m. on History

REASON TO WATCH

An intense overview of the Holocaust

WHAT IT'S ABOUT

Michael Berenbaum, historian and a founder of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, says that to understand the Holocaust, six key terms must be understood -- definition, expropriation, concentration, Einsatzgruppen, deportation and death camps. Each term becomes the subhead for a specific section -- the Einsatzgruppen part, for example, looks at the roving paramilitary death squads responsible for the murder of millions in random or almost impromptu settings like Babi Yar.

Auschwitz and Buchenwald are in the section on "death camps," and so on. There is a heavy emphasis on statistics -- the banality of numbers, if you will -- and engineering, specifically the rail transportation of Jews to outposts in occupied territory. Berenbaum also speaks to the sense some must have when visiting places where the perpetrators and victims have long since disappeared: "You see something, but you see something that is also not there. If you don't see something, that looms for you in an extraordinary way." The film often fills in those lost images.

MY SAY

"Engineering Evil" is well produced but not particularly well focused -- a flaw that tends to drain it of power and even emotion at inopportune moments. It has a perfectly understandable impulse to want to tell viewers everything because there is so much to tell. But there is, in fact, too much to tell over the course of a 90-plus-minute documentary -- and it has been told in other Holocaust films by Erik Nelson, who also produced this.

"Engineering Evil" is filled with many details that, after a while, tend to exert their own morbid fascination -- probably not the best reaction you want in viewers -- when just a few might suffice. Take the brief and powerful discussion of Sobibor: Cameras follow an elderly man who points to an open meadow where a barracks once stood, and suddenly, the whole camp is re-created. It's a stunning visual sequence, but what of this man and what else does he have to say? The film rushes on. I wish I could tell you.

BOTTOM LINE

A sprawling look at human history's greatest crime that will leave you drained and depleted -- yet with the nagging sense that there is so much more to tell.

GRADE

B-