Horror Without Seeing Horror

 The Zone of Interest (2023) focus on a life of a German family that happens to belong to one of most effective mass murdered of the Third Reich, the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (1901 – 1947). There has been a movie about him earlier Aus Einem deutchen Leben (1977) with suberb Götz George playing the leading role.

This movie, however is about the family that lives right next to Auschwitz camp, so close that the wall that surrounds family's idyllic art–deco house and its garden, allows us to see the upper parts of the consentration camp, watchtower with a guards pacing inside it and occasionally at night time we see a chimney of a crematorium spew red flames. Camera's are positioned still or move slowly on a dolly, thus making view like we are bystanders on their garden, the camp and its horrors looming above one-third's of focal plane.

That is exactly what this movie is about. Not seeing things that we already know. And because we know too damn well what is happening on the other side of the wall makes watching the happy family life so banal to us. We see Rudolf Höss, played by singer and actor Christian Friedel (Elser, Babylon Berlin) only doing his work at the phone or on the conference room, and observing daily horrors of the camp, and even then the we only see his face. The family is totally ignorant about the horrors behind the wall, they don't ever mention about those. He knows exactly what is happening, his wife doesn't care and children only suspect. See no evil, speak no evil.

But they and we hear evil. There are shouts and gunfire. Industrial level of extermination makes noise. We only see some selected Jews tending house and garden. One of them spreads ash on a garden... is it human? Once Rudolf and his son's idyllic river trip is interrupted by a flow of grey ash.  

At the end of movie, we see Auschwitz as it is today, as a museum where workers are vacuming and cleaning places for visitor's. According to film critic A.A. Dowd this means that the camp is still a place of work, albeit being a place of conservation instead of destruction. We don't watch these kind of movies to enjoy, we watch them to remind us for evil that can make itself look like it isn't evil at all. 

Never forget!

Film4 Productions ©

 

We still have our fingers!

 In these days it is more common that when we are upset for someone or wan't to express our opinion for someone's behaviour in traffic, we raise our middlefingers. Much rare is british, or I should say English style to raise middle and index fingers reversed, meaning that the palm is towards yourself.

I was reading Arran Lomas' fantastic book Stick a Flag in It and got an answer for the question that I wasn't evan asking. Where does it come from?

Now imagine what you can do with those two fingers, apart being an asshole in United Kingdom. Imagine that you have a bow and arrow and you get the answer, you hold the arrow with those fingers and relase the arrow. 

In 100 Years War, that lasted 116 years, England had managed to create a superweapon that was easy to make and any blockhead could use, a longbow. In the battle of Crécy in 1346, English and Welsh longbowmen made havoc on French cavallery. Knights were clad on harness, however the horses weren't and when the volley of arrows cut the French cavallery out of the game English got the upper hand.

After 69 years English did the same feat in Agincourt. Usually the enemy will adapt new weapons from the enemy, however the French resisted the idea, relying more on short-range croswbows. Instead they despised the enemy longbowmen so much, that they cut their index and middle fingers preventing them to use a bow ever again. This made the beginning of a new kind of hand gesture: When the English longbowmen stood against their French enemy, they raised their hands middle and index fingers showing, "look we still have them".

Museum or an Amusement Park

 In his book The Birth of the Museum (1995) Tony Bennett (not the singer) compares Australian theme park Timbertown as some kind of Disneyland. Both are enclosed areas with similar means to take visitors money. Timbertown being however a some kind of museum, presenting Australia's past. Disneyland has its walking mascots while Timbertown has personnel dressed on period costumes and presenting the life in park's manial historical chores like blacksmith or operating the train that just travels its enclosed loops inside the park, just like in Disneyland. 

That made me think about some museums, like Finland's outdoor museums where the buildings are collected one here other there. Like Bennett states, buildings are too close to each other to be credible image of the past. This of course cannot be helped, it is what it is. Bennett also claims that some museums that are presenting the life of lower classes do it by some bourgeoise romantic view of the past, forgetting all the misery and pain. Sometimes the museum simply dismiss the lower classes to a supporting role to serve the elite. 

Museum is however an institute to make money, it simply won't cope without. If an exhibition is held, lets say on an old castle, you have to select objects and props that suits the old castle, It is not neutral place for any kind of display. And this, sadly makes that castle a some sort of amusement park. 

Spielberg and Unintentional/Intentional Punctum

 The very concept of Roland Barthes' studium and punctum  in photography is a hard thing to understand, however when someone gives you a good examples about those, you get the picture (no pun intented).Is struggled my time to comprehend those terms when I was studying art history in university, before I got enough of that brainwashing (nobody should tell what kind of art you suppose to like).

If you google those terms, this is what you get:

Studium describes elements of an image rather than the sum of the image's information and meaning. The punctum of a photograph, however, contains a deeper dimension: the elements of punctum penetrate the studium—they have the ability to move the viewer in a deep and emotional way.

Lots of words after words. You can learn it by heart and spill it out on examination paper and get full points without understanding it's meaning.

However there is a movie that is full of studium and punctum, and that is Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List from 1993. 

Movie is black and white which is (on my opinion) the first punctum. Seeing a grey person in colour photograph or movie is a punctum, and so is seeing people murdered in peaceful world. Yet the world in the movie is not peaceful and murder and violence is always present. Thus the studium, the very atmosphere of the world has turned entirely so much full of punctum that it has turned to studium, thus the world is black and white because that is pointing to the status quo of the war and holocaust

At one point of the movie you can see a group of jews, driven out of their ghetto, walking towards their imminent deaths. Another sight of that studium situation. Then comes something that is punctum at it's purest form, something that irritates the viewer emotionally: A girl whose coat is not grey but visibly red. Seeing of those other people walking to their deaths is not very much shocking on a movie like this, seeing that little girl that is separated visually from other victims is. And later we can see that same coat on the middle of a giant pyre. Gassed and burned.

Still from Schindler's List (1993), Amblin Entertainment, Universal Pictures.

At the end of the movie, the real people whom Oscar Schindler's actions save, accompanied by the actors, gather to commemorate him on he's grave. Time is now early 1990s, war has ended, the world is coloured again. 

I don't know if this was intentional use of studium and punctum from Spielberg, most probably it was. However these terms were coined in early 1980s by Roland Barthes in La Chambre claire (1980). Yet one can spot so many punctums from lots of photographs and movies before that, Barthes was just givng a name to a phenomena. And Spielberg managed to give us a message by this. We must never forget.

Erebus, Terror and Too Much Horror - AMC's Terror

 

AMC's adaptation of Dan Simmons' novel about the disastrous Franklin Expedition (1845 - ?) is truly fantastic TV drama. British have always been excellent makers of television drama, be it everlasting soap opera or great adaptation of Shakespeare, like Hollow Crown. Actors do fantastic job, Jared Harris does fantastic job as Captain Francis Crozier (1796 - ?), Ciaran Hinds plays pompous John Franklin (1786 -1847) brilliantly, and British new regular face Tobias Menzies plays Commander James Fitzjames (1813 - 1848) with same commitment as he always does. Terror is really good drama about the devastating hardships that men had to endure on this trip to icy hell and ultimately on their horrible deaths.

However... there is something that is causing more of those horrible deaths, something that wasn't there, a monster. A Tuunbaq from Inuit mythology emerges from the night or the mist and rips sailors apart. It is like author has asked help from a five year old, what could be killing men besides lead poisoning, tuberculosis, freezing to death, scurvy or murder? A monster.

On real Franklin Expedition there was plenty of real horror to cope with. On their way to find North-west Passage, their two ships, Erebeus and Terror, were trapped on ice twice, first in winter 1845-46. During that time three men died at tuberculosis, which was aided by lead that was used as a sealant on thousands of food cans ships carried. In TV series a young man called David Young dies and is buried on Beechey island, In real life he's name was John Torrington, and he become very popular by the photos taken from he's well preserved remains. 

Second, and permanent trapment happend in September 1846. Next summer did not thaw the ice as usually. More people died, including John Franklin. Lead must have been taking more victims as it cumulated on men's bodies, causing anemia, weakness and even madness. Lemon juice that was meant to fight scurvy lost it's potency and most of their cans were either leaking and thus going to rot, or poisoning effects of lead might have been discovered. First days without sunlight and then days without dark, surrounded by nothing but ice.  After being trapper 19 months, ships were abandoned and men started their travel to south, 800 miles.

Walking in cold temperatures is itself much for weak, malnourished bodies, add it pulling fully loaded boats is too much. If you sweat, you get too cold and froze to death. When they reached King William Land (now known to be an island), it was a barren wasteland without nothing to hunt in winter when climate can drop to -65, celsius that is. Then came possible mutinies, we really don't know. Only few literal pieces of evidence is found, one of them is Victory Point note, first placed on stone cairn in May 1847, when all was relatively well, and then re-visited at April 1848, with additions that tells how things have turned... not so well. 

Along the way south men died, some resorted to pure cannibalism. The found remains tells that clearly. In 1850 an Inuit saw some 40 men walking south. Last sighting was in 1851 when Inuit hunters saw only four men walking. Nobody of the 129 men survived. We don't know how most of them died. but what is certain that they suffered cold, hunger, exhaustion and madness. Then the death by freezing must have been felt like a comfort from heaven because of the warm feeling before ultimate death. 

No need for a monster.

Im Westen nichts Neues - Selbst jetzt

Still photo from Im Westen nichts Neues (2022, Netflix

Maybe it is a subjective feeling and only for me personally, that I feel certain events of the past has some inbuild feeling that comes with them. It is like some ancient reminiscent of the sorrow and pain that still haunts us.

I feel World War I as a gaping wound that has long ceased to bleed. It has turned into a void full of puss and infection. Abject rotten scar on the timeline of 20th century. However, maybe we all should feel like that way and feel that creeping sadness, hopelessness and the feeling that we are attending a long funeral.

Maybe that will stop us going into the madness of world war again. Then it is such a good thing that movies like these are made. You will watch it once... and once is enough.

                                                                          Never forget!

Ce n'est pas de l'art

Andrei Kovaltšuk (b. 1959): Meeting in Turku (2012)

  If you were a little boy in late 1970s or early 80s like me, you might remember those unicolour small plastic toy soldiers. I had some US Marines and Afrika Korps. Blanket or sand become a battlefield. 

 When you look at this sculpture group, those little plastic soldiers come in mind, albeit in life-size. Their postures and physical appearances are aesthetically rigid, maybe too athletic. Just like some mannequins set for some display, "buy some early 1810s elite uniforms, on sale now". 

 Im not going to get too deep on history behind this group. Basically it's just meeting of King of Sweden (French) and Emperor of Russia (more Prussian than a Russian), held in Turku in 1812. Statue was commemorating the meeting, and was ordered by local Russian consulate and City of Turku. Residents opinion was not asked. 

One year after this was revealed, another work by this artist was presented in Kostamus, and this time it was about another meeting, this time between Aleksei Kosygin and Urho Kekkonen. And that is more horrible than the statue in Turku.

 And finally, what makes these objects as non-art, is their lifelessness. They are lacking that something that makes art, thus making them as those little plastic toy soldiers. Just like some figures to set on some position. They are still echoing some ill Soviet-nostalgia, heroic looking land workers rising the scythe and hammer towards the setting sun. If this is art, then we were artist when we were playing those little plastic soldiers.

Andrei Kovalchuck