Steve McQueen is back with his first film since Small Axe, part of his extremely ambitious five-film anthology series. His first feature-length documentary, Occupied City, which premiered at Cannes, is just as bold but in a different way; A thorough account of Amsterdam and the atrocities committed by the German occupying forces during their stay in the city during World War II.
Every city has its unique history and Amsterdam during the 1940s for non-history buffs is often overlooked in comparison to other war-torn European cities during Nazi rule. Most know the events that occurred in major cities such as Berlin, Paris, London and Vienna. Based on Bianca Stigter's Dutch-language book 'Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945)', McQueen guides us through the Dutch capital and the devastating effect the Germans had on the city's Jewish population.
Director: Steve McQueen
Writer: Bianca Stigter
Star: Melanie Hyams
The narration, editing, and locations emphasize the horrors of the Nazi occupation by contrasting the detailed voiceover with images of the restored streets of Amsterdam. McQueen highlights the demolished buildings, as the locations now tell a very separate story. There is an ever-present sense of eeriness as cinematographer Lennert Hillege captures the streets of Amsterdam in the era of lockdown. The stillness of Hillege's images is chilling, as almost every location was once host to some of the most horrific acts in history. Busy City is at its best when the camera sits back and observes the smallest, most human actions of the citizens on screen. They capture a wide range of images, and while some shots may seem distant from the script, McQueen manages to find some kind of nuanced link between the two.
McQueen's film has a consistent tone and never deviates from his artistic intent. The documentation is combined with Melanie Hyams' engaging but extremely measured narration that reads like a line reading from a presentation. It's not your typical historical documentary voice, but McQueen's film is not an archetypal documentary, so the two make sense together. Each section of the story is written as a one-paragraph summary of the victims, how and where they died, and who killed them (if they were not sent to a concentration camp). Although there are no actors, the city of Amsterdam comes to life as a unique character through the people of the present while the ghosts of the past force us to reflect on humanity as a whole.
With a running time of over four hours, Occupied City will no doubt test the patience of some cinephiles in a theatrical setting and too often opts for a severely academic, almost vignette-like structure in its depth of well-researched but exhaustive information.
There is probably a strong argument for a presentation similar to McQueen's own previous video installations, as a video catalog or curated exhibition, or as part of a television documentary miniseries like the 2021 Amazon series Uprising, which details stories intertwined scenes of the New Cross Fire, the Brixton riots and the Black People's Day of Action in 1981, of which McQueen directed an episode.
Occupied City ends on a sobering note as the camera remains still on an empty tram as it travels through the fog-filled city, the empty train symbolizing the void left by all the murdered victims of an oppressive regime: those seats, now empty, I might have been busy. It then concludes with a bar mitzvah, showcasing the next generation of Amsterdam Jews.
It's as if he's trying to say: there is a future out there, but it's also important to look to the past to avoid the same dire outcomes. Most of Amsterdam's Jewish population was wiped out at the end of World War II, and the Netherlands was the country hardest hit in Western Europe by Nazi oppression. Perhaps, with this documentary, more people will become aware of the tragic history of the Dutch capital, it is a shame that the film is not agile and inventive in its narration.
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