Coming to grips with unfathomable evil
“Who is Oscar? That is a nice man’s name,” Son of Saul actor Geza Rohrig says with a sly grin, when the inevitable topic comes up about his awards chances.
He’s getting used to such questions, after Laszlo Nemes’ Second World War drama won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for its unflinching depiction of one man’s fight for humanity inside the Nazi death camp known as Auschwitz.
Rohrig, 48, is considered a good bet for a best actor nomination at the Oscars for his first screen role as the embattled father in Son of
Saul, which is receiving its Canadian premiere at TIFF. But he understandably would rather just talk about the film.
The former Hungarian punk rocker, now a poet and rabbi living in Brooklyn, N.Y., electrifies the screen in the role of Saul, a member of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. The Sonderkommando were prisoners who were given small privileges in exchange for leading their fellow Jews to the gas chambers and for disposing of their bodies afterwards.
There are no easy ways to talk about this, and Rohrig is frank with his answers: There have been many different films about the Holocaust, yet this one brings a new dimension, by bringing us face to face with the horror of Auschwitz.
Laszlo and I didn’t want to make just another film about the Holocaust, the kind that is often told about survivors. For the vast majority, it wasn’t about surviving. We wanted to show people how the situation really was.
Did you have trouble figuring out Saul’s motivations?
I am not Saul. But I know that as a member of the Sonderkommando, he’s as much a victim as anyone else, if not more so. He’s been dehumanized by his circumstances, as has everyone else there. He doesn’t know all of what is going on; he’s just struggling to survive.
I have four children of my own, so I can understand how a father would feel.
It seems that filming Son of Saul must
It did, but I don’t think about the physical effort. That is nothing compared to the mental one. I spent much time before the film reading the script and thinking about it. I read many accounts written by survivors. I had written about the Shoah myself in my poetry. This was the hardest part of making the film, reading the truth of what happened in Auschwitz and the other camps.
Have you ever visited Auschwitz?
Twice, and they were two very different experiences.
I went to Auschwitz as a student in 1988, before the fall of the Soviet Union. It was a quiet place, not much changed from how it had been. You could really think about what happened there.
I went back recently, and it has really changed. There are tour buses parked out front and Coke being sold in automats (vending machines). Inside there are people running around, taking selfies and listening to music on headphones. I think it’s wrong.
Does the film expect us to judge Saul in any way?
No. I don’t judge Saul, I respect him. He’s in a terrible situation, but he manages to elevate himself above it, when he decides to do something. As I said, I am not Saul, but I ask myself what I would do in his situation. I hope I would do the right thing.