The Holocaust, for the Jews, represented a time of uncertainty and chaos—the complexity of the events that took place during the mass extermination of Jews often deprive the viewers of an ability to comprehend the horrors that went on in the camps. It is the task of filmmakers to be able to do justice to such a topic, Nemes defies dramatization and rather walks the viewer through the void created by the unconveyable enormity of the events.
[pullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] “What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?” “I don’t know. My…my code of morals, perhaps.” “Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?” “Comprehension.” [/pullquote]
Laszlo Nemes’ recent Academy Award winning movie Son of Saul is not only a film about the life of a Sonderkommando members in Auschwitz-Birkenau, as it goes far beyond just attempting to depict the communal suffering in the camp. Son of Saul works around the idea of the existential vacuum: the director seeks to fill this void with an artistic expression that tries to rationalize the absurdity of the Holocaust. He does this through the protagonist who himself is in search for meaning that can fill his moral vacuum. Thus, when he realizes that he lacks the answer, he takes it upon himself to do a righteous act that brings some form of purpose to his life. This film resonates a stark allegory of phenomenal consciousness and the human condition as seen in the works of Frankl and Camus.
The director uses a filming style that advances a feeling of nostalgia with the use of a 35mm screen as well as his “in-the-moment” style of cinematography that follows the protagonist around, instilling a sense of direction in the minds of the viewers. As the camera is constantly homing in on Saul, the director tries to make the viewer have an experience of the monstrosities that are constantly occupying the background and the setting of the film. The protagonist Saul Auslander, a member of the Sonderkommando unit is seen shepherding the Jews at the camp to the gas chambers and cleaning up afterwards—which involved sorting through their belongings, cleaning the chambers, and burning their corpses. It was during this daily drill that he sees a doctor suffocate a young boy who had survived the gas chamber, it is this boy that gives meaning in form of a task to Saul’s life as the film revolves around Saul’s quest of giving this boy he claims to be his son a proper Jewish burial. Saul has no sense of repercussions of his actions as he moves forward on his illogical quixotic quest: it is as if he tries to fill a void, a void surrounded by a moral dilemma. Sonderkommando members hold a very controversial place in the history of the Holocaust, they were Jewish inmates that acted to save their lives in the German machine of murder. The unit was often rewarded for their tasks with menial favors such as better rations and postponement of their inevitable deaths. The members of the units were according to Primo Levi “the most demonic crime” of the Nazis. A crime, as it was “an attempt to shift onto others—specifically, the victims—the burden of guilt, so that they were deprived even the solace of innocence.” Which is the solace director Laszlo Nemes’ seeks to restore through the film Son of Saul.
Victor Frankl refers to a lack of meaning and purpose in life as the existential vacuum, manifestations of the vacuum include apathy and sometimes noogenic neurosis which is best described as psychological symptoms caused by moral and spiritual conflicts. It is these moral and spiritual conflicts that Saul is subjected to during his time at the camp that lead to his neurosis. This further affects his attitude towards life as he lacks the sense of consequence to his actions and turns into an accidental rebel. In On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders, Frankl characterizes attitude change due to the existential vacuum as follows: (1) a provisional attitude toward life–living as if there is no tomorrow; (2) a fatalistic attitude toward life–acting as if one has no control over one’s destiny; (3) collectivist thinking–a denial of one’s own personhood; and (4) fanaticism–a denial of the personhood of those who think differently. He goes on to further argue that “I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek, were ultimately not prepared in some Ministry or other in Berlin but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of Nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”
Saul is in search of meaning and takes up the tasks of burying the young boy he refers to as his son. He is driven by his Judaic piety to do a morally praised job that he seeks might bridge or fill his void. All throughout the movie, we come across an existential and moral crisis that reminds me of Albert Camus’ work The Plague. As an epigraph, Albert Camus chose a sentence by Daniel Defoe: “It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another as it is to represent anything which really exists by that which exists not.” This is what the film seeks to do. As Camus, himself, suggests, in a letter to Roland Barthes, that “The Plague should be read on several levels; but nevertheless its obvious content is the struggle of European Resistance against Nazism.” The director uses these ideas to shape the depiction of the horrors of the holocaust as he often plays with negative space in terms of what we don’t see but feel. The movie is characteristic of shots in which we hear noises in the background but do not see the acts, thus indulging the audience in the process of meaning making that fills their own existential vacuum, giving their own sense to the holocaust. For instance, when we hear the screams of people in the background intensify as Saul awaits there, as a dead soul, for time to pass as, for him, it is just a part of his daily routine, it’s the blank horror in his eyes, coupled with our imagination that makes this movie a piece of brilliance. By homing in on Saul, and on the range of his melancholic eyes, we are made aware of the monstrosities that surround him and that we don’t need to have them spelled out. Furthermore, the movie serves to ascribe both dignity and identity to the living commandos as well as the immortal boy to thereby refute the Germans to whom they are “pieces” affected by the Nazi machinery of killing.
The notion of “Absurdity” is the central theme of the film, Camus states that individuals must embrace the absurd condition of human existence while they must also defy the status quo to explore in search for meaning. In The Plague, the death of the populace is so preposterous that it leads to a mental dissonance for those who try to reason, this is similar to what we can imagine happened in Auschwitz. Like in The Plague, many doctors try to play their part to help the suffering populace, it is a similar action that Saul seeks to perform. Although, in both cases, the individuals are aware of the fact that their actions might not decrease the emotional and physical suffering of others but they seek to elevate their own moral and ethical suffering by their righteous deeds. The action of giving the boy a proper Jewish burial brings back meaning to his life, the Sonderkommando unit members seek meaning and purpose through organizing an uprising to destroy the gas chambers.
“And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended.” It is this hope that the burial of the boy raised—the hope that there was some sense of order amidst chaos. The fulfillment of traditions brought a sense of harmony. It was the hope that the Jewish inmates were given, through deception by the SS officers, that they were at the camp not for extermination but for work. Right before the inmates were made to strip down their belongings for a quick “shower,” they were told: “We need people like you in the workshops, you will work and will get paid. Hurry up or else the soup will get cold,” it was this false assurance that gave their lives a meaning that, although not initially, Saul deprived them of through his unintentional role in the killing machinery. It was this false hope that Saul felt the need to compensate for through his actions of redemption—as if he hadn’t given the boy a proper Jewish burial, he would have suffered from his own moral internal plague.
The movie represents the void that may exist in the Hungarian psyche regarding the Holocaust. It is a way through which the director seeks to understand the role played by Hungarian Sonderkommando members in the Holocaust. The film is a multi-play of genealogical representation of the Holocaust focusing not only on the event as a whole, but also on personal histories through a play of symbolic gestures that are open to the viewers’ interpretations.
