Given the alarming rise of antisemitism and Holocaust denial during the past several years, this film’s arrival couldn’t be more timely. Academy voters obviously thought so, and granted it five Oscar nominations.
 |
| Rudolf (Christian Friedel, standing far left, dressed in white) and his family invite friends for an afternoon romp in his wife's carefully nurtured garden, all of them oblivious to what takes place on the other side of the barbed-wire-topped wall at one edge of their property. |
Amis based his novel’s cold-blooded villain, Paul Doll, on Auschwitz concentration camp commandant Rudolf Höss; Glazer boldly draws directly from history in his depiction of the actual Rudolf (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), their five boisterous children, and the bucolic setting in which they live.
“Bucolic,” only by force of disregard.
The year is 1943. Glazer opens his film on a charming pastoral scene, as Rudolf and his family are joined by friends for a riverbank picnic. (Actually, this isn’t how the film begins, but I’ll get back to that.)
Everybody returns home after an enjoyable day of sun, splashing in the water, and convivial conversation. Rudolf and his family live in a charming multi-story villa, their every need tended by quietly obedient young women. Hedwig delights in the Edenic garden she has nurtured behind their home, with the assistance of numerous workmen.
Glazer stages these outdoor scenes against the tall, barbed-wire-topped concrete wall that runs the length of their property: the most grisly theater backdrop ever imagined, with unspeakable horrors taking place behind this stage’s metaphorical closed curtain.
(The 40-square-kilometer area immediately surrounding the Auschwitz concentration camp was designated by the Nazi SS as interessengebiet: the “zone of interest.” Höss and his family did indeed live therein, alongside the camp.)
Glazer calmly, clinically — relentlessly — depicts the banality of the day-by-day Höss family life. Hedwig shows flowers and buzzing bees to their infant daughter. Younger son Hans (Luis Noah Witte) plays with toy soldiers and occasionally beats a toy drum; his sisters Heidetraut (Lilli Falk) and Inge-Brigitt (Nele Ahrensmeier) cavort in the small swimming pool their father built, complete with wooden slide.
We can’t call their behavior denial; that’s too easy. It’s actually indifference. While evil comes in many forms, casualevil arguably is the worst.
Quiet atrocities mount. Shortly after each transport train departs, bundles of clothing are delivered to the Höss home. “Pick one you like,” Hedwig tells her children and staff, before heading into her bedroom to preen in front of a mirror, wearing a “new” fur coat. She finds lipstick in one pocket, and uses it.
Hedwig’s workmen pull weeds and then till her garden soil with the readily available ash. Hans stays up at night with a flashlight: not to read comic books, but to examine his collection of gold-filled teeth.
Early on, Rudolf meets with engineers who proudly display plans for new and improved crematoria, which will “cycle” hundreds of Jews each day, via alternating furnaces. Given their detachment, the men could be discussing the fine points of a sawmill processing lumber.
Aside from that, and one brief later scene that frames Rudolf against billowing gray smoke, we’re never confronted with what takes place on the other side of that massive wall. Cinematographer Lukasz Zal’s camera never goes inside.
But Glazer and sound designers Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn ensure that we hear it.
Day and night: an aural onslaught of moans, thumps, cries, gunshots, barked commands and a constant unspeakable roar ... Mordor’s Black Pits writ tangible. Glazer explains, in his production notes, that he made two movies: the one we see, and the one we hear. They complement each another, and both verge on unbearable.
Not that Rudolf and his family seem to notice, or care.
And yet ... despite the artifice and pretense, the Höss paradise is not without flaws: cracks in a Satanic, stained-glass universe. Rudolf takes two of his children fishing at the nearby river: a serene setting that goes awry when the water surface subtly changes, at the upper right of Zal’s framing shot.
Is it just reflected sunlight? Are we imagining it?
But no; what soon is revealed as a widening blanket of gray sludge prompts Rudolf into hasty action. He pulls the children from the water and bundles them home, where they’re painfully scrubbed in scalding water.
Inge-Brigitt has nightmares, and sleepwalks. When Hedwig’s mother Elfryda (Medusa Knopf) visits, the older woman initially is charmed by the surface pastoral grandeur of the life her daughter has made. But Elfryda’s good humor shifts to revulsion that night, when confronted with the unceasing sounds, smells and charnel-house glow (a deft bit of silent acting by Knopf).
Friedel’s Rudolf is coldly clinical: the epitome of Nazi efficiency, even during trivial moments as when he switches off all the house lights, Zal’s camera tracking his movements from hallway to room, before retiring for the night. Friedel is so stoic that his occasional bursts of laughter are jarring, as when he and Hedwig tease each other from their separate single beds.
Rudolf is a doting father ... although we get the impression that he fulfills this role because it’s expected, not because he genuinely loves his children.
Hüller tricks us. At first blush Hedwig seems to be cheerfully apathetic and complacent: the model of an obedient wife. But her true colors emerge when Rudolf is promoted to deputy inspector of all concentration camps, and must relocate to Oranienburg, near Berlin.
Hedwig is furious at the very thought of having to abandon her garden-laden “nirvana.” She refuses to leave, becoming shrill, spiteful and mean to her servant girls; one particularly nasty remark erases all doubt. Rudolf may “console” himself with the belief that he’s fulfilling a purpose, but Hedwig is a greedy, predatory, unfeeling monster.
Unfortunately, this film’s power frequently is diluted by Glazer’s increasingly irritating stylistic touches, and his inability to get out of his own way. Over the course of a few nights, Rudolf reads “Hansel and Gretel” to his daughters (which, you’ll recall, concludes when Gretel shoves the witch into her own oven, and cooks her to death).
This charming bedroom setting vanishes as Rudolf’s narration continues against scenes of a young Polish girl, who risks her life each night to gather apples and pears, which she hides at the prisoners’ trench work sites, so they can find and eat them. But why does Zal shift to infrared for these surreal sequences? To make the girl look like a ghost? It’s also difficult to tell what she’s doing, and seems weird for its own sake. And annoying.
Getting back to how Glazer actually begins his film, the title — white text against a black background — slowly fades away as we’re left staring at a dark screen for two (three?) minutes, while assaulted by weird noises which — at this moment — have no context. (You’ll swear the theater projector’s bulb burned out. It didn’t; just be patient.) After what seems an eternity, Glazer finally cuts to the aforementioned riverside picnic.
He concludes the film the same way, and the effect does not improve with repetition.
At another point, about halfway in, Glazer intercuts blank, bright redness for several seconds. (Because ... why?)
On the other hand, our final image of Rudolf, as he slowly descends the stairs of an otherwise empty building, and then peers down a long, dark hallway, cleverly cuts to a future beyond his imagination ... but we know what is being showcased.
There’s no question that Glazer hopes his work will join the pantheon of memorable Holocaust films, alongside The Diary of Anne Frank, Au Revoir Les Enfants and Schindler’s List ... but, sadly, his self-indulgence places it behind those masterpieces.
No comments:
Post a Comment