Occupied City (2024)

[El Unicornio, mang]

Steve McQueen's latest and it's a tough sell. Over four hours of shots of Amsterdam around the time when the rest of the world was in Covid lockdown, with a voiceover explaining different events that occurred there during the Nazi occupation.

It's done in a very cold, detached manner although the voiceover is pleasant (there's two versions, one in English by Melanie Hyams and one in Dutch by Carice van Houten of GoT fame). There's no interviews, no humour (aside from a few shots of people falling off their bicycles if that's your bag), and there's no real attempt at any kind of drama or cinematic narrative aside from one beautiful scene at about the hour mark where a drone flies through the empty streets at night. But you see the full spectrum of life in Amsterdam through all the different seasons.

Anyway, as someone who loves then and now stuff and has a keen interest in learning more about WWII and the Holocaust, and generally just likes calm, ambient glacially paced things, it hit the spot. Definitely going to bore the pants off most (even those who go in knowing what it's about) and Amsterdam isn't particularly scenic but give it a try. I watched it in three parts rather than all the way through. It doesn't really build to anything so if it's not grabbing you in the first hour you can probably just give the rest a miss, although it does also amount to more than the sum of its parts. Would probably work best as an art installation.