At the end, when the film returns to the present, the two old survivors are chiding each other over who lived a more sexually adventurous life. Their memories of a most horrific time are individual, partial, even petty. S tooped under the weight of age and overcoats, a group of old people shuffle off a tour bus at the gates of Auschwitz. Members of a younger, spryer entourage rush past, a video cameraman leading the way. It's an understatement, to say the least.
Fictional stories set at the time of the Holocaust continue to arrive at a steady pace.
Official outlets, like the Shoah Foundation and an archive at Yale University, are recording survivors' testimonies for the historical record. Increasingly, though, the survivors and their families are seizing the camera. Documentaries that follow aging Jews as they return to Europe, tour the camps and cemeteries, or try to find living family members have become almost a genre of their own. Voyages understands and explores this impulse, yet concludes that cinema will be no better at putting together the pieces than painting, poetry, or memoir. Documentary and testimony certainly have their purposes, but also their limits.