Occupied City

Occupied City

Occupied City

Occupied City

Firstly, I appreciate filmmaker Steve McQueen's style and intentions on providing an uncomfortable, yet, interesting historical story about WWII and how past and present contexts of the situations. McQueen uses his style to show the city of Amsterdam and the past with gorgeous camerawork, interesting narration and discusses about her environment throughout. Throughout, there are some great uses of music and the style approach without using archival footage and focusing on modern settings and scenarios added a lot of interesting themes and discussions about the context to be explored. I found the choices to be interesting. It's a 4-hour documentary and I understand the intentions of McQueen's vision. Unfortunately, for a four hour long journey, it's not fully justified because some of the discussions and concepts end up feeling repetitive. The historical discussions are interesting but some of the discussions and ideas felt as if they are being repeated over and over again. For instance, Shoah is a 10-hour documentary but every single moment in Shoah was necessary and important to the context of the setting. Occupied City unfortunately isn't able to fully grasp everything rightfully and ends up being more of a patience testing rather then an experience. Overall, the documentary isn't bad as I do appreciate it. But I found myself thinking this documentary could have been trimmed towards 2 hours and a half to become a perfect movie.

In one way I admire this movie. The intent of showing the buried and uncomfortable history of a major European city and simultaneously showing the conflicts and protests that have become part of the present day is admirable. McQueen manages to show modern Amsterdam on a city-wide civic scale as well as a personal, private scale and gives equal importance to both. I also find the focus on multiculturalism admirable. We spend time with people with North African, East Asian, Afro-Colonial & Palestinian heritages. As well as the modern Jewish community of Amsterdam. But it's very repetitive. The historical anecdotes are very compelling, but after a while they seem to be the same type of story over and over. We also didn't need the journeys of the roofs of trams in Amsterdam. Bottom line, this documentary DID NOT need to be over 4 hours long. It turns what could have been a truly meditative experience into an endurance test.

I can't believe this film even got made. It's like a weird elementary school book report assignment. It starts with a woman stating an address, telling you in two sentences what happened there, and then stating another address. For FOUR hours. No interviews. No maps of the city so you can even see how these addresses relate to each other. No historic footage. Nothing. Half the time she tells the address, says what happened, then says "demolished." At which point you realize you're not even seeing the address she's talking about. If you like memorizing disconnected sound bytes with unrelated montages of Amsterdam in 2020, this film is for you. I can't believe I paid money for this. In fact, I'm going back to Amazon to try to get a refund. It's that bad.

WWII, Nazis, the fate of my people are of and have always been of intense interest to me. Films depicting the war from all angles have intrigued and peaked my attention for decades. Having lived in Amsterdam for 13 years, on the so-called Gold Coast where many Jews were banished, I had to see this film. What a disappointment. I waited for the punchline which never came. It was just a long boring mental monologue of names, dates, family, and jobs of individuals in Amsterdam who were murdered. We saw where they lived but nothing else. Feeling and emotion were not part of this film. Juxtaposed against 2021 how the lockdown was the first time since WWII in Dutch history where people were confined was a poor comparison to the Holocaust and felt disingenuous and insulting. No one was "murdered" for staying indoors or not wearing a mask. Health crises and pandemics have been scourging humans forever but to compare it with the Holocaust was just fantastical.

Occupied City is a very odd documentary, comprised of very distinct images and texts. The images are all of Amsterdam between 2020 and 2023, featuring daily life on the streets: the canals, houses, traffic, people. There are the summers with people lying in the parks and winters with ice skating on the canals. Throughout the film you can see the effects of the Covid-19 crisis, like a big demonstration against governmental measures against the spread of the virus, but also demonstrations against systemic racism, against climate change, remembrance days like May 4th and Keti Koti, the opening of the Holocaust Names Monument, the arrival of the first Ukrainian refugees and also celebrations like King's Day and the arrival of Saint Nicholas. Lastly there are images of - and sometimes inside - buildings and other places that are connected to stories of the second world war and the Nazi occupation. It's a beautifully shot "day in the life" documentary if you just watch the images. The texts (in Dutch voiced by actrice Carice van Houten or in the English version by Melanie Hyams) is comprised of snippets from the book "Atlas of an Occupied City" written by historian Bianca Stigter, who is also McQueen's wife. Dozens, if not hundreds of little stories connected to an address. Of jews hiding from the Nazis, of resistance against occupation and collaboration with the occupiers. Sometimes the text complements the images very well, especially when they film from inside the buildings from the stories. Watching people living their lives at places with such a rich and horrific history is sobering. Sometimes (especially after an hour or 3) you find yourself just watching the images, because it's very hard to concentrate on both the image and text at the same time. Just watching the film can be very meditative at times, until you catch another "...and then they were executed in a concentration camp in 1944...." and you realize what you are watching. There are so many stories, dates, names, deaths, that it's almost numbing. I've lived in Amsterdam for a long time and I recognize a lot of places and all of the events in the film. I've lived in places that had connections to the war, and I've always been conscious of events that took place at places that I know. I was even watching the film in the "City" theater that is featured in the film. So for me it was almost a pleasantly recognizable (if also a very very very very long) watch. To be honest, if you already know many of the things that happened during the war, it's not even that confronting anymore; it's simply the sheer volume of the stories that is overwhelming. I think the absence of interviews and explanations of the images will be confusing to those who don't know the city and don't know what's going on on screen. All in all, it's a monumental undertaking: years of filming, dozens of stories, 4 hour watch time, to try and connect the stories of occupied Amsterdam to those places in the present. It's a piece of art more than a documentary. I would recommend it especially for people who already have a connection with Amsterdam, who either live there or have a particular interest.

Trailer—Occupied City