Paper Clips (2004)

Paper clips is, at times, a heartfelt documentary about american students collecting paper clips to honor holocaust victims, at other times it goes to show the worst of American documentaries. Now before you hate me for criticising this heartwarming documentary hear me out. The documentary revolves around a school in Tennessee in the south of America, historically a place of racial hatred and extreme discrimination, who decided to spread the message of what harm prejudice and racism can do. The school and students decided to honor victims of the holocaust, they decided to represent the 6 million Jews by collecting 6 million paper clips. Ultimately they ended up receiving over 25 million paper clips through public donations, which they placed as a memorial in a train carriage once used for transporting victims to the Nazi death camps. The public support the campaign gained is just amazing and I really liked the overall message of the film and the work of the students. You might be wondering what problems i have with a film that carries such a lovely message. Well for want of a better word I would describe it as too 'Amercanised'. What I mean by that is that it has been made very melodramatic for no conceivable reason. The holocaust is one of the most harrowing and tragic events in human history, a total of 11 million are estimated to have been slaughtered by the Nazis to support their racist, prejudiced and horrific ideology of ethnic and cultural cleansing. It is not something that requires sad string music and prolonged close ups of the children and survivors crying. The holocaust does not need more done to make it more depressing and horrific. Countless times survivors sharing their stories were accompanied by sad music as if their stories of tragedy and murder aren't enough to get the audience sobbing. It's infuriating that whoever was responsible for adding the music and focusing on the crying children thought it was needed to further tug at heart strings. If you take one thing from this review don't let it be that the film isn't worth your time because I would say that it most certainly is. The whole idea and message of the film is if nothing else interesting. When the camera isn't focusing on the crying people, the stories of the survivors I feel are something very important that does need to be heard by all human beings. Despite my rant, I implore you to watch this film and listen to the stories of those who witnessed some of the worst of humanity first hand and survived.