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Night And Fog Comparative Essay

Decent Essays

The documentaries “Night and Fog”, and “Capturing the Friedmans”, both were created to move their audience in a way to get desired reactions. Nevertheless, while they both were created to move their audience, the motivation behind the two are quite different. “Night and Fog was created to serve as a warning for people about the dangers of cruelty, while “Capturing the Friedmans was made in a way to have viewers question the guilt of the two Friedmans convicted of sexuals assault. Alain Resnais’ documentary “Night and Fog” is a film that focuses on the atrocities that took place within the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Even so while while the focal point of the film is the Holocaust, this film is not a story about the oppression …show more content…

To do so, Andrew Jarecki portrays a sense of innocence and ambiguity from the alleged perpetrators, and victims.. One of the most profunding ways in which a sense of ambiguity is portrayed within this work is the absence of recollection. Within the film Arnold Friedman confesses to the fact that as a child, he sexaully assaulted his younger brother while in bed. However, when his brother is asked about this instance, he denies it all and claims it never happened. These moments are then paired with other instances of ambiguity such as the montage of interviews where former students will speak upon an instance of sexual assault within the computer classes, only to then have another former student deny every claim previously made. This absence of a universal truth works to make viewers question whether or not the assault happened. This ambiguity is then accompanied by home videos of the family dealing with infighting, denial, and total frustration with the entire process: in effect humanizing the men. Through this humanization its becomes increasingly harder for an audience to find guilt in the men. This process of reflexivity, allows audiences to view the stories of these two men from a different standpoint, and come to a different conclusion in regards to guilt of these men, than of before. In effect the audience can be moved to

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