Sunday Blog #4: The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Love Lies Bleeding, Dead Boy Detectives
Love, blood and trauma
Strangely, it’s rare for Holocaust projects on screen to unfold almost completely in the concentration camps – the very Hells under discussion. Even Schindler’s List, perhaps the best-known in the genre, stalks sporadically in and out from the point of view of a Nazi Party member. The Zone of Interest deliberately evades and ignores the horrors from behind a tall wall, the murdered reduced to distant sounds. Regardless of the controversies around The Tattooist of Auschwitz – the Sky/Peacock adaptation of Heather Morris’ equally divisive novel (based on a real story) – its firm placement within the infamous camp, among the prisoners, gives the six-part series a dark daring I hadn’t experienced in this type of fiction before.
It’s obvious to say that the series doesn’t capture the full horrors of the place. (What drama could?) I’ve read survivor Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning about his experiences in Auschwitz and Dachau; I even visited the former camp on a school trip when I was 17. You walk in and around the giant warehouses or along the railway and the atmosphere is haunting. You’re among ghosts; you’re stepping through their graveyard – exacerbated by the mountains of hair and shoes and crutches. But Frankl (also a controversial figure) populated that phantom abattoir in my memory, not only describing the atrocities but also the ways in which the prisoners coped in their surreal situation. He was a psychologist, and the experiences formed his theory of ‘logotherapy’ or existential therapy – a notion he concocted for himself to deal with the genocidal day-to-day. The prisoners had a sense of humour, a sense of culture, even a sense of love. Instinctually, this runs in contradiction to the darkness, to our sense of the darkness. But Frankl describes it quite vividly in relation to his wife:
my soul found its way back from the prisoner’s existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered.
…
I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out … but at that moment, it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved.
This love, these thoughts and images, become methods of survival and it’s hard not to see the same efforts play out in The Tattooist of Auschwitz. The series and the novel are based on the recollections of Slovakian Holocaust survivor Lali Sokolov, but the former attempts to assuage inaccuracies picked up by the Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre by dramatising the meetings between Heather (a trepidatious but empathetic Melanie Lynskey) and Lali (a formidable but traumatised Harvey Keitel). Memories grow into unreliable spirits of reality, pasted into the drama via Lali’s guilt and trauma. I haven’t read the book, but this is a genius method of navigating those deep criticisms.
The younger Lali is portrayed by Jonah Hauer-King (World on Fire), showing the classic psychological shift from naivety to survival mode. He’s sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and assigned the job of tattooing new prisoners; one of these is Gita (a compellingly passionate Anna Prochniak). They immediately fall in love across the table. It’s an oddly, traumatically beautiful scene as director Tali Shalom-Ezer fills the frames with their faces – erupting with uncommon humanity. Shalom-Ezer and cinematographer David Katznelson (It’s A Sin) are incensed with faces, perhaps inspired by Barry Jenkins and James Laxton’s efforts in The Underground Railroad (Prime Video) – another series about historic, institutional cruelty with generational consequences. As Lali learns of sporadic, often random, murders of prisoners he knew, the series sharply cuts to the dead. Staring. At you. They see into your soul as you see into theirs. It’s frightening as much as upsetting.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz isn’t perfect. Despite the vivid and violent cruelty, you have the sense that it’s giving you a more aesthetically pleasing version. A lot of the characters are attractive, when (in reality) they’d probably be walking bags of bones smothered in filth. I question a sex scene between prisoners in one of the episodes, as Frankl wrote that malnourishment extinguished any sex drive. It’s also irritating that everyone is speaking English, considering the culture’s gradual evolution toward genuine languages supported by subtitles (Shogun being this year’s zenith example).
However, I still think the efforts are commendable despite the backlash. One writer described the series as ‘grotesque’ and that fictional representations of concentration camps can only anaesthetize the actual experience, painting over the darkness with tropes of entertainment. There’s value in this opinion, but I don’t think ‘entertainment’ is the right word. Art has been made about tangible evil as a way of chiselling something purposeful from such pointless tragedy. Opinions around TV and film suffer from an overarching notion that the mediums can only be entertainment rather than art or poetry or expression. Granted, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is more watchable than I expected because of these tropes, but that doesn’t remove from the horrors to be found there.
Change of pace: director Rose Glass follows up her isolated horror film Saint Maud with a sapphic erotic thriller about crime, family and bodybuilding. It’s a strange coincidence that Challengers released last week, as both films are intensely athletic, sexually queer, and pregnant with sweaty, muscular bodies.
To make the screening after a certain bus didn’t arrive, I had to hurple quickly across Waterloo Bridge. Being disabled and overweight didn’t help things. I arrived with only seconds to spare, and the first scene is a sweaty montage of muscles lifting weights in a gym. I was sweating too, but I looked nowhere near as good. I left the BFI Southbank with the self-conscious paradox of admiring beautiful bodies around me while cringing at my own. But I don’t place much blame on Glass for that, since Love Lies Bleeding tackles bodies in a deliberately twisted fashion. It’s comparable to the body-horror of David Cronenberg, but I see more similarities in the modern Cronenberg acolyte Julia Ducournau (Raw, Titane) – especially with how Glass captures the female body.
Kristen Stewart plays Lou, a mullet-wearing gym manager in 80s Southwest USA with a dodgy criminal dad (a Vecna-like Ed Harris) and a passionate attraction to the hench, bodybuilding out-of-towner Jackie (Katy O’Brian). The relationship with the latter progresses from glances across equipment to sharing steroids to intensely pleasuring each other (unlike Challengers, there’s actual sex in Love Lies Bleeding). But the reality of Lou’s father as well as her abusive brother-in-law JJ (a weirdly cast Dave Franco) catches up to her love life, twisting the new couple into a Coen Brothers plot with a psycho-horror surrealism that explodes nonsensically by the final act.
You have to admire Glass’s weird and fearless direction, Ben Fordesman’s colourfully violent cinematography, and the immersive score by Drive composer Clint Mansell. But the script – penned by Glass and Weronika Tofilska (a director on Baby Reindeer) – is structured like an indecisive rat-king, with several creatures scuttling in different directions while possessing an alluringly revolting spectacle. I’m glad it’s getting high praise elsewhere because Glass is a talented filmmaker and I want to see her next project, but I didn’t take to Love Lies Bleeding.
I also treated myself to Dead Boy Detectives on Netflix, the latest Neil Gaiman-related fantasy series. This is broadly connected to the more metaphysically ambitious The Sandman, which plunges into dreams, the afterlife, and the ethereal rulers that reign over them. Edwin (George Rexstrew) and Charles (Jayden Revri) are ghosts roaming the Earth, on the run from Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste returning for a cameo) and whatever posthumous fate awaits them. Despite being damned because of a technicality, Edwin was initially sent to Hell before a brazen, Dante-esque escape, and found a new purpose in investigating the mysteries of other lingering ghosts – bridging their way into the afterlife. He’s a prissy, meticulous teenager from the 1910s and Charles is the more rebellious, optimistic Watson to his Sherlock. During a new case, they stumble across Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson), a teenage, amnesiac psychic hounded by her toxic ex-boyfriend who can penetrate her mind.
Like a lot of Gaiman series, the world mixes mythology, folklore and near-Pythonesque whimsy to form a fantasy that’s actually fun. I am one for serious impossibilities, but sometimes the severity from windowless fanatics can be off-putting. Dead Boy Detectives is just meant to be enjoyed, boasting a plucky band of entertaining characters trying to do some good before fading into non-existence. The dialogue is often packed with clunky exposition, and I didn’t much like being teased with a London-based fairytale to then fly to some Stephen King town in the US. But I adored the personalities and the imagination required to build these realms, vividly connected to spiritual plains. I was especially enraptured by episode three (The Case of the Devlin House) and episode seven (The Case of the Very Long Stairway), the latter of which vaguely resembles the structure of the novel I’m writing (I will say no more).
ON TV THIS WEEK
Abbott Elementary, Disney+ (Wednesday 8 May)
I adore Quinta Brunson’s Emmy-winning mockumentary sitcom, set in an elementary school in Philadelphia. Maybe it’s because I’ve watched all the really good American comedies that have ended (The Office, Seinfeld, Cheers, Friends, etc.), but I’m so thankful to watch a good one in its prime. Naturally, Abbott Elementary runs on as many jokes and gags and asides to camera as possible, but there’s a poignancy underlying the comedy: the aches, pains and disappointments of teaching. I love seeing these stories represented, and season three looks to tackle burnout in the education system. Also, the previously useless TikTok wannabe principal Ava (Janelle James) is choosing to better herself after a summer at Harvard.
Inside No. 9 series 9, BBC Two/iPlayer (Wednesday 8 May, 10pm - 10:30pm)
This dark, surreal and often hilarious anthology series from League of Gentleman weirdos Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith is coming to a close. I remember Inside No. 9 was often used as a reference in my Film Production course at uni, chiefly examining the excellent precision with which Pemberton and Shearsmith spin their 30-minute tales.
The first episode of this final season follows nine intersecting characters on Merseyrail’s Northern Line, where the service stalls and many have to get comfy with one another. Siobhan Finneran (Happy Valley) also stars.
Doctor Who, BBC One/iPlayer (Saturday 11 May, 6:20pm - 8pm)
This is an exciting, albeit slightly confusing, time for a Doctor Who fan. The writer/showrunner of the 2005 reboot, Russell T Davies, has rebooted the time-travelling drama again: with the latest iteration starting at ‘season one’ on the BBC and Disney+. No doubt it’s to find an American audience to justify its new, Marvel-like budget, but Davies has cleverly cooked this into the narrative: providing David Tennant’s 10th and 14th Doctor a lovely goodbye via bi-generation to give Ncuti Gatwa a new start, alongside Millie Gibson as his companion.
This season sees Davies writing most of the episodes, accompanied by another returning showrunner Steven Moffat as well as Kate Herron (Loki, Sex Education) and Briony Redman (Smear). The first episode is Space Babies, in which The Doctor (Gatwa) and Ruby Tuesday (Gibson) travel forward in time to see a baby farm run by babies… your guess is as good as mine.
IN CINEMAS THIS WEEK
La Chimera, dir. Alice Rohrwacher
I’m excited to watch La Chimera. I confess I’m not overly familiar with Alice Rohrwacher’s work, except for the two episodes of My Brilliant Friend she directed, but her latest film looks intriguing. Josh O’Connor stars as an Englishman in Italy, who goes on a magic-realist journey through the world of black market archaeology.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, dir. Wes Ball
I gave up with the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise after the second entry, Dawn. Both films were decently made, but – at this point – I honestly don’t care about the premise. I’m not even sure what the message of these movies are anymore. The Witcher’s Freya Allen stars in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, following a young ape who starts to question everything about his past.
IN THE WORKS
Vanity Fair reveal their first-look preview of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megapolis. My brother recently introduced his wife to The Godfather trilogy, and that reminded me how great and iconic a filmmaker Coppola is. I even have a craving to rewatch Apocalypse Now, but don’t ask me which version – I’m lost in the forest of Theatrical, Redux and Final cuts. And like Apocalypse Now, Coppola has devoted much of his life and spirit to his new film with great personal financial expense (raising $120 million himself). The new Vanity Fair preview provides first-look images as well as statements from Coppola (unavailable for interview following the death of his wife Eleanor) about influences on the film, which range from the sci-fi fiction of HG Wells to the history of Ancient Rome. He fuses them together to create a bold, stylised New York in which the ambitious architect Caesar (Adam Driver) wants to become an agent of change. Coppola lists those influences in full:
“I wouldn’t have been able to make it without standing as I do on the shoulders of G.B. Shaw, Voltaire, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Dickens, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Fournier, Morris, Carlyle, Ruskin, Butler, and Wells all rolled into one; with Euripides, Thomas More, Moliere, Pirandello, Shakespeare, Beaumarchais, Swift, Kubrick, Murnau, Goethe, Plato, Aeschylus, Spinoza, Durrell, Ibsen, Abel Gance, Fellini, Visconti, Bergman, Bergson, Hesse, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Cao Xueqin, Mizoguchi, Tolstoy, McCullough, Moses, and the prophets all thrown in.”
Andrew Haigh helms new Leonardo Da Vinci biopic. Walter Isaacson is one of the world’s best-known biographers, covering the lives of Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, Elon Musk and Steve Jobs (from which the Danny Boyle/Aaron Sorkin biopic was adapted). But I remember Isaacson’s book of Leonardo Da Vinci being especially present on shelves and tables in bookshops everywhere. Following writer/director Andrew Haigh’s success with All of Us Strangers, probably the best film of this year (releasing in the UK at least), he’s now tackling the Isaacson tome. After years of the project struggling through development hell and shifting between studios, it sounds like they finally have a handle on it. Haigh also has experience directing period dramas, making the bleak nautical series The North Water (BBC iPlayer) with Colin Farrell.
Kristen Stewart and Oscar Isaac cast in 80s vampire drama Flesh of the Gods. Following her recent role in Love Lies Bleeding (see above), Stewart returns to the 80s – this time, in Los Angeles. She and Isaac play wealthy couple Alex and Raoul, who float from their luxury LA apartment at night to explore the surreal nightlife of the city. Flesh of the Gods is the third film by Mandy filmmaker Panos Cosmatos, who also contributed to Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix. I didn’t think much of Mandy; it’s one of those horrors, like the original Suspiria, that prefers bright red colours over narrative depth. However, the premise of this one entices me. I love it when LA is painted as a nightmare, like in Babylon or Under the Silver Lake as well as David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. Cosmatos confirms as much in IndieWire:
“Like Los Angeles itself, ‘Flesh of the Gods’ inhabits the liminal realm between fantasy and nightmare,” director Cosmatos said in a statement. “Both propulsive and hypnotic, ‘Flesh’ will take you on a hot rod joy ride deep into the glittering heart of hell.”
TRAILER PARK
Megapolis, dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Lee, dir. Ellen Kuras
Eric, created by Abi Morgan (Netflix)
We Are Lady Parts series 2, created by Nida Manzoor (Channel 4)
Presumed Innocent, created by David E Kelley (AppleTV+)
Ashley Madison: Sex, Lives and Scandal, series directed by Toby Paton (Netflix)
Mufasa: The Lion King, dir. Barry Jenkins