Gray Matter

In the spring of 2002, filmmaker Joe Berlinger (co-director of the acclaimed documentaries Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost, and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) traveled to Vienna to witness the burial of the preserved brains of over 700 mentally and physically handicapped children. Condemned as undesirable during the Nazi rise to power, the children had been murdered, and their remains dissected and analyzed as part of the Nazi eugenics program during the run-up to the Holocaust. Berlinger and his close-knit camera crew trace these Nazi horrors to Dr. Heinrich Gross and the Spiegelgrund clinic, with their investigation revealing not only that Gross was still alive (nearly 90 years old), but had eluded justice for nearly six decades, due to a longstanding conspiracy to prevent him from standing trial, maintained by Viennese officials determined to sidestep Austria's heinous contributions to the Nazi regime. In his wide-ranging audio commentary included as a bonus on this DVD, Berlinger acknowledges using filmmaking techniques that he's not entirely comfortable with (such as including himself in the film, using hidden microphones, and showing clinical photographs for shock value), but his artistic decisions serve a purpose: to reveal how Viennese society has effectively swept its guilt and shame under the carpet, fostering deep-rooted denial and creating circumstances that kept Gross out of prison (and continuing to do clinical research well into the 1980s) and left the brains of murdered children on laboratory shelves for decades, denied a proper burial until the horrific truth was revealed. Granted, Gray Matter is difficult to watch, but it's a powerful film that underscores the lingering horror of the Holocaust. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (J. Shannon)