I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal (2007)
-
79% of critics liked it
(24 reviews) -
78% of users liked it
(1,617 ratings)
Richard Trank's documentary I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal joins Into the Arms of Strangers, The Power of Good, and other recent nonfiction films that reflect on WWII-era individuals emotionally invested in the pursuit of justice. This heart-rending film… More Richard Trank's documentary I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal joins Into the Arms of Strangers, The Power of Good, and other recent nonfiction films that reflect on WWII-era individuals emotionally invested in the pursuit of justice. This heart-rending film concerns Wiesenthal, a concentration camp survivor released from the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in 1945 on the verge of death from starvation. During his imprisonment, Wiesenthal dreamed of one day re-entering society and establishing himself as an architect, but the atrocities of the camp pointed Wiesenthal's life and career in a much different direction. When Wiesenthal returned to the outside world, with 89 of his family members exterminated by the Holocaust, he vowed to track down and bring to justice as many of the perpetrators of the Nazi atrocity as he could find - and spent years at this task, via a running list of the camp torturers, that he had secretly kept as a detainee. In the early years, with much of the world still ignorant of the extent of the Holocaust, Wiesenthal's was virtually a one-man operation, but in time, he joined forces with the American War Crimes Unit and U.S. Army War Crimes Committee to see the task through to fruition. All told, Wiesenthal helped incriminate an astonishing 1,100 individuals, including the leaders of the Sobibor and Treblinka camps, Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele - and his overarching goal, astonishingly, was not cold blooded revenge but a simple love of humanity - the need to free future generations from the dark shadow of the Nazi threat. To create this film in Wiesenthal's memory, Trank and his crew travel to multiple continents, and film exclusive interviews with those whose lives were touched by Wiesenthal, as well as Wiesenthal's descendants; they intercut this interview footage with rare archival footage of Wiesenthal. Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman narrates. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
- Directed By
- Richard Trank
- Written By
- Richard Trank, Marvin Hier
- Genres
- Documentary
PG-13,
- In Theaters
- May 23, 2007 Wide
- Studio
- Luminous Velocity
Critic Reviews
-
Maureen M. Hart, Chicago Tribune
More objective filmmakers might have delved a little deeper and produced something more real.
-
Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times
It's an exercise in hero worship that couldn't be more justified, even though Wiesenthal would have been modestly embarrassed by the honor.
-
Richard Nilsen, Arizona Republic
Persuasive and engaging, if one-sided. It could be argued there is only one side to argue.
-
Lael Loewenstein, Los Angeles Times
The film successfully contextualizes [Wisenthal's] legacy for a new generation.
-
Tamara Straus, San Francisco Chronicle
The film dramatically shows how many of the criminals on Wiesenthal's lists were eventually sent to jail or died from heart attacks or suicide when they were at last located.
See more critic ratings and reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)
Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)
Featured Audience Ratings
Currently unavailable on Flixster
Also available on
Other Retailers
Not Available
Not Available
Subscription Services
Not Available
Not Available
Not Available
