Some pundits say that making films about the Holocaust is impossible — that its horror simply cannot be recreated on film, and that any attempts to do so run the risk of seeming either prurient or futile.
However, the new film “Son of Saul” attempts to showcase the savagery of seven decades ago from ground level, with its tale of a Hungarian “Sonderkommando” named Saul Auslander (Geza Rohrig), one of thousands of Jewish prisoners who were forced by the Nazis to dispose of the bodies of their departed neighbors, friends and relatives in the concentration camps.
“It’s not a Hungarian point of view, it’s really the human point of view from within, the victim’s point of view,” director Laszlo Nemes, a native of Budapest, told The Washington Times. Films about the Holocaust, he said, typically take “the sort of external point of view, and I wanted to make a film about the rule of the camp and … survival.”
Mr. Nemes shot “Son of Saul” in extremely long, uninterrupted, handheld takes that follow Saul as he moves throughout the camp on his gruesome errands, being screamed at by Nazi officials and ordered about grizzly work alongside the other Sonderkommandos — many of whom were summarily executed so as to keep them from telling others what they had seen and done.
“It’s [both] harder and easier to play a long take because you’re not on and off,” Mr. Rohrig told The Times. “You’re just in one state of mind [that] carries you forward.”
Mr. Rohrig, a Hungarian who now lives in New York, says that the real challenge of his performance as Saul wasn’t the long takes “but the horror itself.”
“For a nice Jewish boy like me, it was clearly an unbridgeable loss … and how do you go about” realizing that on screen, he said.
His research included a great deal of reading Holocaust survivor testimonials.
“Don’t loan me a book because … I write in the margins,” Mr. Rohrig said, a smile spreading across his face amid discussing such material. “It was a challenge, but I was very confident in the team, who really saw it through.”
Mr. Rohrig said that “Son of Saul” gives high school students an opportunity to experience history come alive in an uncomfortable but educational way.
“I’m a father of four, and I know that digital is their reality, the present [of] Facebook [and] Twitter, and they think history is boring,” he said. “And I think they sit through this movie oftentimes for the sake of their parents or teachers, and they come out genuinely shaken by it. This isn’t the movie they thought they were going to sit in for.”
Mr. Nemes adds that Holocaust survivors or their descendents have told him they didn’t wish to see his film, but then express gratitude to the director after beholding it. No less a figure than Elie Wiesel has even offered the film his blessing.
“They would thank us for doing it because it wasn’t a film they expected,” Mr. Nemes said. “That was, for me, almost the most rewarding” praise.
Both Mr. Nemes and Mr. Rohrig say the rise of certain European right-wing elements and the ability of hatemongers to hide behind Twitter handles gives them pause, but it reinforces why films like “Son of Saul” must continue to be made to counter such narratives.
“You can just feel that some of these people would do it over again,” Mr. Rohrig said, “and this is the saddest thing 70 years and a couple of genocides later, that the human evil and callousness and meanness and brutality is still among us.”
“Twitter doesn’t help this,” added Mr. Nemes.
“Son of Saul” opens Friday in the District.
• Eric Althoff can be reached at twt@washingtontimes.com.
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