Beyond the Prohibition of Images: The Representation of the Unrepresentable in the Film Son of Saul

Abstract

Direct representation of genocide has long been considered taboo in Holocaust cinema. In particular, the ‘image prohibition’ claimed by Claude Lanzmann, the director of Shoah, a milestone film in Holocaust film history, had a tremendous effect on artistic work concerning the Holocaust. However, Nemes László's film Son of Saul (2015) convincingly refutes the prevalent concerns about visual representation of Shoah. It manages to reconstruct the experience of a Sonderkommando member, a key witness of the Holocaust, by the careful arrangement of the camera's views, depth of field, and sound. To do this, the director takes seriously the issues regarding the Holocaust's unrepresentability, rather than ignoring or disputing them. If Shoah cannot be portrayed, it is because Shoah is a double annihilation in that it annihilated the Jews as well as the evidences of their annihilation. The film shows how the Nazi's destruction of representability can be placed in the order of representation at the level of not only film aesthetics but also narrative.