In one of the most unique examinations of the past almost entirely using images of the present, director Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave, Widows) brings us a provocative and epic documentary that looks at the filmmaker’s adopted city, Amsterdam, from its period of Nazi occupation in the early 1940s until the present-day pandemic.
Informed by the book Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940–1945), written by McQueen’s wife, Bianca Stigter, Occupied City goes almost street by street across its nearly 4-1/2 hour run time (which includes an intermission), with narrator Melanie Hyams giving the history of each location by showing us only how it looks in modern times. It’s McQueen’s version of a ghost tour, in which the modern buildings offer up very few clues of the horrors that took place in and around them, making them all the more sinister. McQueen doesn’t attempt to thematically tie these locations together, instead allowing the viewer's mind to compile these structures and stories internally, giving us a haunting meditation and utterly singular take on history that might also give us clues where things are going.
Outside of the individual narratives about each location, McQueen does not attempt to give us a unifying story about this lovely city. Occupied City is about the cumulative effects of ancient trauma placed in tandem with modern visions of empty streets (due to lockdown) and the resulting protests to these restrictions. The result is a vibrant and substantial meditation on time and place, and while such a lengthy film might cause you to hesitate to see it, the time flies by because of the segmented structure. Seek this one out and find the time to sit with its powerful vision.
The film is now playing theatrically exclusively at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
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