Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah as Cinematic Craftsmanship

The 9½-hour Holocaust documentary “has come to serve as a solemn metaphor for remembrance, as well as for butt-numbing endurance. … But to talk of Shoah only in terms of moral compulsion or epic length is to miss the multitude of Lanzmann’s decisions, his shot-by-shot brilliance – from revelatory tracks and pans to dramatically self-contained long takes.”