The general acception is that the Holocaust was essentially a bad happening, bad to the extreme, vile, despicable. Therefore the right attitude towards it would be disapproval, hence any rendering of the subject must adopt a negative tone and purport a strong no-no. I, personally, do not fall outside this view. But what should the director of a movie based on the Holocaust do, in order to deliver the right emotional punch ?
What kind of approach should a movie that wants to make an account of the Holocaust take, to achieve maximum effect ?
I identify two strands:
The first resonates through its statistical ampleness. The goal here is to see as many victims killed as possible, in as varied methods as permited (for visual impact). The suppostition is that, by suggesting the scale of the tragedy, the common viewer will assimilate it with deeper, fuller understanding. Murder as a routine is terrifying through its impersonality - it becomes genocide, an issue of proportion and quantity, a wide blot spread over our dignity. We feel shocked and appalled, maybe a bit guilty, and therefore the movie meets its goal.
Of course, this presupposes that the film be presented from either a neutral standpoint or the perspective of the murderers themselves. The victims remain to be presented in virtue of what unites them as an organism : their nationality and plight.
The classical example of this sort of movie is, obviously, Schindler’s List. You cannot get to a point where you can relate with any of the Jewish characters, because they all soon get absorbed into the common mass or get killed. You can only empathise generically with their condition. What you get, in turn, is Schindler’s internal struggle and Goeth’s attrociousness.
The second strand relies on focusing on a singular example, which is followed in its evolution. The secret of this procedure is that you become increasingly attached to the main characters and, when at least faced with their demise, your entire consciousness is unsettled at the acknowldgement of such injustice. This follows a psychological progression to a point where the view narrows in exactly on the main character, placing him under the microscope. By directly relating to him, you acquire a more intimate, up close feel of what it is to be persecuted like that. I’m thinking of La Vitta e Bella and The Pianist
Of course, these are perfunctory divisions, which can only withstand at a laboratory analysis. In real pictures, yiu usually get a mix of the two, with variations.
Out of boredom, I could add an orientation to this distinction and say that the first strand is left-wing, because it deals more with communities as a whole and societal changes that take place at the action of various forces, while the second strand is right-wing, due to its concern with the individual and the preservation of individual rights.
Also, I believe SIATD considers La Vita e Bella a better Holocaust movie than Schindler’s List. I attribute this to his being a nominalist, hence more inclined to favour the particular in detriment to the universal. In this light, his up-coming novel about football should be a first-person narrative.
Of course, it is ultimately he who decides.