Conspiracy, HBO, May 19, 9 p.m. E.T.;

Two inadvertent bookends explore the Holocaust from its deceptively mundane beginning to a heretofore unstaged end. Conspiracy re-enacts the 90-minute meeting in which silky-voiced SS bureaucrat Reinhard Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh) gently bullies a roomful of Nazi functionaries into accepting the Final Solution as a fait accompli. A bloodless yet brutal testament to the violence of euphemism and groupthink--eerily indistinguishable from any middle managers' meeting--it is the banality of evil brought unignorably to life.

Night One of Anne Frank, based on Melissa Muller's 1998 biography, is a familiar depiction of the beloved diarist and her family's life in the secret annex. But on Night Two, following Frank (Hannah Taylor Gordon) into Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, it becomes a different film. These scenes, unflinching and almost without dialogue (the Nazis strip Anne of her clothes, her hair and her indomitable spirit), make a hard-to-take but overdue answer to the easy optimism of past Diary productions.

--By James Poniewozik

Quotes of the Day »

Get & Share
MICHAEL SINNOTT, a Roman Catholic priest who was abducted by Islamic separatists in the Philippines a month ago and released today, on the conditions he had to endure
For use in rail of Articles page or Section Fronts pages. Duplicate and change name as necesssary to distinguish.

Time.com on Digg

POWERED BY digg

Quotes of the Day »

Get & Share
MICHAEL SINNOTT, a Roman Catholic priest who was abducted by Islamic separatists in the Philippines a month ago and released today, on the conditions he had to endure

Stay Connected with TIME.com