Based on a true story and set primarily in 1942, The World Will Tremble approaches the devastation of the Holocaust from an angle not often explored. While we have seen plenty about the awful concentration camps, the death camps were just as horrific in their own twisted ways. Arguably, these were even worse, considering there was literally no way to survive. Jewish people were brought to these repulsive “camps” not to be put to work as slave labor, but strictly to be exterminated mere hours after their arrival. All these years later, the prospect of very real people committing these atrocities remains difficult to stomach. Writer/director Lior Geller’s devastating, deeply compelling The World Will Tremble forces audiences to watch the Holocaust unfold in real time, as helpless to stop its progress as its non-fictional tortured characters within.
Geller wastes no time plunging us into the thick of this scenario. After a bit of table setting text about the formation of Jewish ghettos and the invasion of Nazi Germany, we follow Solomon (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, The Invisible Man, The Haunting of Hill House), a Jew plotting a daring escape from this hellhole. He appears to be the de facto leader of the group, secretly conspiring along with the determined Wolf (Charlie MacGechan, We Die Young, Deus) and heartbroken father, Michael (Jeremy Neumark Jones, The Last Post, Belgravia). To call their conditions unfair would be an impossible understatement. Solomon and the others are forced against their will to be the caretakers of this death camp, attending to every whim of the Nazi soldiers. They are used as target practice, killed at random, made to dance like trained monkeys, and perhaps worst of all, must tend to the corpses of fallen Jews by digging their mass graves.
David Kross (The Reader, War Horse) plays Lange, a commander of the so-called “transit center.” His warm kindness at first hides Lange’s ugly nature. He blatantly lies to the Jews that come there, promising them they will be treated better here at long last. He lures them into a false sense of hope, urging them to puts tags on their valuables and belongings so they can be retrieved at their final destination. The screams of these people, stripped down and corralled into vans to be gassed to death, are downright haunting. Lange is the type of villain who will never receive a proper comeuppance—what could be equal to the unspeakable acts he commits in the name of the Nazi party? Solomon and the others must clean up Nazi dirty work, expressly forbidden from communicating with each other or with any of the “in transit” Jews.
Reflecting the confusion of the Jewish people in dealing with their oppressors, Geller provides subtitles for only a sparing amount of the German dialogue. They are helpless, in the dark, and treated in a dehumanizing manner. As our window into the Jewish perspective, Oliver Jackson-Cohen gives a riveting, altogether heartbreaking turn as Solomon that may just go down as his best performance to date. We are left rooting for Solomon and his crew to follow the river and flee to tell a rabbi of the atrocities they have witnessed. Will anyone believe it if they can manage to get the word out?
Make no mistake: The World Will Tremble is not an easy watch. The visuals are horrifying, particularly when Geller reveals the shocking functionality of the infamous gas vans. Knowing the history of World War II does not make a single second more palatable in its excruciating devastation. One needs no familiarity with any of it to feel for the poor souls at the center of the action. This story feels more important than ever to tell, mainly when (somehow) so many Holocaust deniers exist in the real world. Given the historical significance—extensively researched by Lior Geller with the help of Holocaust historians—the recounting of the very first death camp escape must be seen to be believed. Emotionally crushing yet fiercely prescient, The World Will Tremble is one of the most accurate onscreen portrayals of the Holocaust to date.
The World Will Tremble when it dramatizes the first eyewitness account of Holocaust horrors, exclusively in select theaters on Friday, March 14th.
