Settle down, people, settle down, and make yourselves comfortable. Because it's time for one of those reviews that can feel more like a bit of a rant mixed with a bit of a lecture. I know, I know, you can barely contain your joy.
I debated whether or not to view and review Occupied City. It's always harder to review a documentary than it is to review a traditional narrative feature, and the subject matter here doesn't seem like one that would make for an enjoyable distraction for those who may read it during this holiday season. But sometimes it's not about making things enjoyable, or more palatable. Sometimes making people uncomfortable is necessary, especially as we look around us at a world that is having fires stoked by ill-advised beliefs in all opinions being equal and every story having two sides.
Directed by Steve McQueen, based on the book by his wife, Bianca Stigter (a Dutch culture critic and author, and also the director of Three Minutes: A Lengthening, which feels very much like a precursor to this), Occupied City is a look around modern-day Amsterdam while a narrator (Melanie Hyams) relates many tales of a community ruined and many lives lost in the city. That's all it is, and that's all it needs to be.
I don't like to single out others, and it's good to remember that all film opinions are subjective, but looking at the negative reviews for Occupied City helps to show why it is important, although I appreciate that some may only benefit from it when the full context is hammered home to them. People just think this is a boring and aimless look at a city while someone tells you what happened decades ago, without any connection between the past and the present. Those are the people that should be forcibly sat down and made to watch this again and again, at least until they see that there's no way to disconnect the past and present. Our present, in a number of small and large ways, is formed by the past, and it's becoming harder and harder to remind people of that, as it is also becoming harder to convince people that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".
There's a hefty runtime to deal with here, the standard version is 266 minutes (although I remember hearing about a much longer version that was part of an installation somewhere), and there's no change to the format throughout, but it's once again important to understand that THAT is the point. Viewers quickly become relatively immune to the catalogue of horrors, maybe being startled again by an unexpectedly unpleasant detail here and there, but it goes on and on and on. It seems as if it will never end, as I am sure it seemed that way to the people living through WWII. There's a fine short film by Alan Clarke, Elephant, that uses a similar, but not identical, approach to a different bloodshed-filled chapter of history, and I appreciate this way of presenting evil in a way that also shows how banal and boring it can be for those who can be constantly hearing about it without being directly affected by it. That happens today, it happens to many of us almost every day, and if Occupied City makes just one person remember to speak up in protest against any kind of bigotry, abuse, or dehumanisation then it's worth the four and half hour time investment. Actually, it's worth that investment anyway.
The present is getting away from us in a way that is scarily quick and scarily regressive. Become more familiar with the past, especially while we have people who are allowed to tell us about it without trying to reframe any of the major villains.
8/10
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