Documentary Review: 'Three Minutes A Lengthening' is Extraordinary

Three Minutes A Lengthening (2022)

Directed by Bianca Stigter

Featuring Gary Kurtz, Maurice Chapman

Release Date August 26th, 2022

Open your imagination for a moment. Picture in your mind a small boy, close cropped buzz cut, ratty clothing. The boy sticks out his tongue and nods his head up and down excitedly. It’s a very silly, childish bit of acting out. It’s not particularly notable in any way out of context. So, let’s give it context. The boy we are talking about is Jewish and he lived in Nasielsk, Poland in 1938. That year, nearly the entire Jewish population of Nasielsk were violently torn from their homes in Nasielsk and within the next 2 years, most would be dead in concentration camps.

An image that would be innocuous, charming, or innocent in any other context takes on an immensely poignant and deeply sad quality when you give it a context. This thought occurred to me while I watched the extraordinary documentary Three Minutes: A Lengthening. The documentary directed by Bianca Stigter takes three minutes of film footage of Polish Jews from Nasielsk that was found in a closet in Florida several years ago and spins out the lives of people who could be recognized and remembered from this 84 year old piece of film.

Narrated by the incomparable Helena Bonham Carter, Three Minutes A Lengthening repeats images, frame by frame of this single three minutes of film. The aim is to capture the faces and put these faces into your mind. From there, the filmmaker, with the aid of the man who located the footage shot nearly a century ago by his grandfather, Glenn Kurtz, tracks down at least one man who was in the video who leads to the identification of several other people in the video.

Through this holocaust survivor, Maurice Chandler, we get the most unique insight into Nasielsk in 1938, a devout community though one divided by wealth and class as so many other communities. It’s an odd detail but it means a lot to Maurice as he takes care to relate it. As Maurice is shown himself in the 3 minutes of footage and asked about the boy next to him Maurice indicates that they didn’t run in the same circles as indicated by their hats. Maurice’s cap and the flat cap worn by the boy next to him demonstrated a class difference that would not be obvious to an outsider.

Whether it is Maurice’s detailed insights or the remarkable amount of research that Gary Kurtz did to try and locate and identify the people captured in the footage, all of it serves to contextualize the people of Nasielsk beyond this uncanny three minutes of seemingly random footage. Hence the title, Three Minute A Lengthening, the aim is to extend the lives of the people of Nasielsk beyond this footage and even beyond their tragic fate in the holocaust.

Another fascinating segment follows Kurtz’s determination to find the identity of a local shop owner seen emerging from what is later identified as the only grocery store in Nasielsk. With the help of a rigorous research assistant, Kurtz does discover the woman’s identity and that leads Maurice to relate a little more about the woman whose shop, he now recalls, was directly behind his family home. Seemingly small details create the amazing moments of insight and memory,

With the moment fast approaching when people like Maurice Chandler will no longer be with us, a documentary like Three Minutes A Lengthening becomes an invaluable source of memory and reflection. One thing that those who spread hate want to do is remove humanity from the people they hate. They want us to suspend our empathy. This kind of sensitive and thoughtful documentary assures that the humanity of holocaust victims will always remain at the forefront of our collective memories.

More than 6 million Jewish people were murdered in the holocaust. That number is staggering and always will be. When you add that to a document such as Gary Kurtz’s incredible book Three Minutes and this documentary inspired by Gary’s book, it brings that unfathomable statistic to a place you cannot help but reckon with. I don’t need to say this but I want to, it matters to me, each of the more than 6 million Jewish people murdered in the holocaust were individuals with mothers, fathers, friends, children, siblings. They were neighbors, shop owners, and employees. Many were devout, some left the faith, they had hopes, dreams, goals and desires.

You know all of that but it can get lost when we try to objectively reflect on history. Three Minutes A Lengthening is a necessary reminder of the basics of humanity. A little boy sticks his tongue out at the camera and wildly shakes his head up and down. The innocent silliness of youth. That boy was murdered senselessly. Restoring that boy and the people of Nasielsk, even in name only, gives them back a small but precious amount of what was taken from them, their existence.

Three Minutes A Lengthening opens in theaters nationwide on August 26th, 2022. For more of my writing, more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews, visit my archive blog at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter at @PodcastSean and follow the archive blog @SeanattheMovies. You can also hear me talk about movies on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast on your favorite podcasting app.