Buried Prayers

Steven Meyer's deeply affecting documentary, narrated by Laurie Anderson, takes us back to a camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, Majdanek, in order to honor those who left everything behind.

With the survivors' physical presence amongst Nazi slaughterhouses as its own powerful statement, Buried Prayers is a nonfiction work that confronts Holocaust atrocities from a piercing ground-level view.

The film would be stronger if it told us a little more about what the survivors have been doing since the camp was liberated by the Soviets in 1944, but their reactions to revisiting the camp are wrenching to watch.

Steven Meyer's documentary treads a middle ground between illumination and cheap waterworks.

Documentary's insistent inflation of buried gold jewelry and watches into symbols of heroic defiance and transcendental tragedy rings hollow in the wake of weightier Holocaust testimonials.