Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Five Jewish Hungarians, now US citizens, tell their stories: before March 1944, when Nazis began to exterminate Hungarian Jews, months in concentration camps, and visiting childhood homes more than 50 years later. An historian, a Sonderkommando, a doctor who experimented on Auschwitz prisoners, and US soldiers who were part of the liberation in April 1945.
The Last Days is a Spielberg-produced Holocaust documentary focusing specifically on the Hungarian Jewish experience in the final months of WWII, giving it a pointed historical focus that distinguishes it from broader Holocaust documentaries. The five personal narratives are deeply moving and carefully assembled, with the return visits to childhood homes and the liberation footage providing powerful emotional resonance. The ending sequences—survivors revisiting their pasts and confronting former perpetrators—are exceptionally affecting and well-constructed, earning a genuine standout score. Cinematography and interview staging are professionally handled but not cinematically adventurous. While the subject matter is profoundly important, the documentary form itself is fairly conventional within the Holocaust testimony genre, keeping Novelty and other categories in the solid but not exceptional range.