Amazon’s Hunters, which sees Al Pacino lead a ragtag team of Nazi hunters (including Logan Lerman and Carol Kane), arrived on Friday. While intriguing and entertaining, the Jordan Peele-produced series didn’t quite hit the target despite a strong cast. And although we won’t know for awhile (if ever) how strong the viewing numbers shall be, the official Auschwitz Memorial quickly voiced its perspective on a particular scene that it deemed “disrespectful and dangerous.”
That would be the so-called “human chess” scene, written by series creator David Weil. The scene was one of many set in the Auschwitz concentration camp to depict the bone-chilling atrocities committed by Nazis. However, the memorial took issue with the fictionalized take (given that the chess game was invented for the series and doesn’t appear in history books as such) and criticized Hunters for choosing not to depict factually-based horrors in favor of showcasing a fake event based in a real setting.
Auschwitz was full of horrible pain & suffering documented in the accounts of survivors. Inventing a fake game of human chess for @huntersonprime is not only dangerous foolishness & caricature. It also welcomes future deniers. We honor the victims by preserving factual accuracy. pic.twitter.com/UM2KYmA4cw
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) February 23, 2020
In response, Weil penned a lengthy statement posted by Deadline. He specifically explained why he fictionalized the chess match:
Why did I feel this scene was important to script and place in series? To most powerfully counteract the revisionist narrative that whitewashes Nazi perpetration, by showcasing the most extreme — and representationally truthful — sadism and violence that the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews and other victims. And why did I feel the need to create a fictional event when there were so many real horrors that existed? After all, it is true that Nazis perpetrated widespread and extreme acts of sadism and torture — and even incidents of cruel “games” — against their victims. I simply did not want to depict those specific, real acts of trauma.
Weil continued, stating that Hunters is not a documentary, and he felt it important to tell Holocaust stories without “without borrowing from a real person’s specific life.” More specifically, he felt it important to not fall into misrepresenting anyone’s real experience, and it sounds like he felt that it would be safer to use “symbolic representations” during the process rather than depict documented horrors and possibly mess up the facts while attempting to render them onscreen. It’s certainly a difficult line to walk, and a show like Hunters would probably never have a shot at getting everything correct. Weil seems content to shoulder the criticism, and it remains to be seen whether his team’s efforts will result in future Nazi hunting by Pacino and co-stars.
All 10 episodes of Hunters are currently streaming for Amazon Prime members.
(Via Deadline)
