Final Account

Name: Final Account
Genre: Documentary
Released: May 21, 2021
Duration: 94 min
Rating: 76

2021

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Generally favorable reviews based on 17 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 4 Ratings

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7.8

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7.8	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 4 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Focus Features | Release Date: May 21, 2021 | PG-13

Summary: Final Account is an urgent portrait of the last living generation of everyday people to participate in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Over a decade in the making, the film raises vital, timely questions about authority, conformity, complicity and perpetration, national identity, and responsibility, as men and women ranging from former SSFinal Account is an urgent portrait of the last living generation of everyday people to participate in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Over a decade in the making, the film raises vital, timely questions about authority, conformity, complicity and perpetration, national identity, and responsibility, as men and women ranging from former SS members to civilians in never-before-seen interviews reckon with – in very different ways – their memories, perceptions and personal appraisals of their own roles in the greatest human crimes in history. … Expand

Director: Luke Holland

Genre(s): Documentary

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 94 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Tara Brady

Dec 3, 2021

This is a vital companion piece to Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and it ends with a chilling coda. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Glenn Kenny

May 21, 2021

The spirit of Claude Lanzmann, whose monumental Shoah remains a nonpareil cinematic text on the Holocaust, lingers over and around Final Account, a film assembled by Luke Holland around interviews he conducted beginning in 2008. Read full review

Brian Lowry

May 21, 2021

The "important" label can weigh heavily on a documentary, but the description applies to "Final Account," director Luke Holland's decade-long odyssey to capture and preserve the memories of Germans who lived through the Holocaust, acknowledging their complicity to varying degrees. While much has been done to chronicle survivors' stories, this sobering companion belongs on the shelf alongside them. Read full review

Matthew Monagle

May 20, 2021

Final Account is about today as much as yesterday, and that makes it perhaps the most urgent World War II documentary of them all. Read full review

Richard Roeper

May 19, 2021

What makes Final Account so intriguing and, yes, so infuriating, is seeing and hearing from so many Germans who are near the end of their days and have somehow managed to make excuses, to rationalize, to distance themselves from the hell that was their homeland in the 1930s and 1940s. Read full review

Chris Barsanti

May 18, 2021

Luke Holland’s stark and revealing documentary is a gift of memory to future generations, though it’s one that some will likely view as an unwelcome reminder of how everyday people can become complicit in incomprehensible evil. Read full review

Jay Weissberg

Sep 15, 2020

Clocking in at a swift 90 minutes, Final Account is like a teenager-friendly approach to “Shoah,” designed as an introduction to issues of responsibility, guilt and the banality of man’s inhumanity to man. Read full review

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User Reviews

julesk

May 21, 2021

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” ― Primo Levi

This film brilliantly documents very dangerous common people.

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

JLuis_001

Feb 9, 2022

Dictators and fascist leaders are really nothing without followers. In a situation like the holocaust and Nazi Germany the most simplistic explanation would be to call everyone involved evil, but it's more horrifying to understand that in many cases it happens because people are stupid andDictators and fascist leaders are really nothing without followers. In a situation like the holocaust and Nazi Germany the most simplistic explanation would be to call everyone involved evil, but it's more horrifying to understand that in many cases it happens because people are stupid and indifferent.

There was a book burning in Tennessee, USA a couple of days ago by a pseudo pastor who's just looking for attention and to keep taking money from people.
But you know what? He's not the biggest problem. The problem is all the people who were there following his directions and throwing books into the flames.

Final Account may not go as deep as I would've liked, but it reminds people how dangerous the enablers are.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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