"The Flat" is a great documentary that leaves a lot of questions unanswered, which is as it should be. There are really no good answers for what unfolds over the next 97 minutes. Through the course of the film director Arnon Goldfinger tries to find out his family's recent past, in both Germany and Palestine, something that had never been discussed until after his grandmother died. The documentary confronts the messy business of life, and how people deal with family scandal and buried secrets. A war generation, both German and Jewish, forgets their past on purpose, the next generation is not encouraged to question their elders about it, and the third generation wonders why the two that went before could so conveniently ignore their own, and their parents, history. Goldfinger does a good job of laying out how all the participants in this documentary handle, or don't handle, their part in the story. It's a quiet film that is shadowed by immense subjects. As the viewer, we are left to wonder just how much we understand of our own family and its history, and if we have denied parts of our own past just as conveniently as some of the participants in this documentary have.
It's a human story, in the end. Humans do terrible things and justify them in ways those of us who come after might find callous and chilling. Goldfinger cannot interview any of the original participants in this story, since they are all dead; some of natural causes, some in the Holocaust. The final scenes are just as void of answers as the rest of the film. Goldfinger and his mother look for her grandfather's grave in Berlin, in an old Jewish cemetery, during a driving rainstorm. They look in vain for any sign of their family member in this overgrown graveyard, but can find none. Both say they were not prepared for not finding the grave, as if it now suddenly is of the utmost importance that they find some link with their past, after so many years of silence on the subject. That's a good sign, because it might mean they will continue to confront the hard answers and keep up the search for their history, but as the viewer you weep, just the same, for all the love and knowledge that has been lost to time and death. We don't ever get that back.
It's a human story, in the end. Humans do terrible things and justify them in ways those of us who come after might find callous and chilling. Goldfinger cannot interview any of the original participants in this story, since they are all dead; some of natural causes, some in the Holocaust. The final scenes are just as void of answers as the rest of the film. Goldfinger and his mother look for her grandfather's grave in Berlin, in an old Jewish cemetery, during a driving rainstorm. They look in vain for any sign of their family member in this overgrown graveyard, but can find none. Both say they were not prepared for not finding the grave, as if it now suddenly is of the utmost importance that they find some link with their past, after so many years of silence on the subject. That's a good sign, because it might mean they will continue to confront the hard answers and keep up the search for their history, but as the viewer you weep, just the same, for all the love and knowledge that has been lost to time and death. We don't ever get that back.