The Invisibles

Hiding in plain sight: The Invisibles

Claus Rafle's The Invisibles, released in Germany in 2017 as The Invisibles: We Want to Live, tells the stories of four German Jews who survived the Holocaust by hiding out in wartime Berlin. Reenactments of the four narratives are interlaced with period documentary footage of Berlin and the reminiscences of the four actual protagonists. That we know the four survived does nothing to lessen the tension or sense of paranoia. The Invisibles stands partly as a portrait of indomitable courage, but also one of a wartime Berlin where the Nazi elite wined and dined while most starved and dodged bombs. Like Errol Morris' The Pigeon Tunnel, The Invisibles sometimes suffers from redundancy due to its intermingling of survivors' testimony with the visual recreations. In its favor, the characterizations are largely vigorous and the social scope of the narrative is impressively broad. Rafle allows enough subjective feeling to bleed into the narrative that the film never feels like a history lesson.