“This is a love story,” says Lali Sokolov (Harvey Keitel) at the beginning of “The Tattoo Artist of Auschwitz,” as a warning, or perhaps as an invitation; It is not, then, the usual story of the Holocaust, which we are about to begin. (Although there will also be many of the usual ones).
The memories of real-life survivor Sokolov (played by the elder Keitel and the younger Jonah Hauer-King) became the basis of a 2018 novel by New Zealand writer Heather Morris, who interviewed him for three years with a view to writing a screenplay. . The novel it became sold many copies and topped the New York Times bestseller list (there is no better guarantee of a movie deal) and sits on a shelf among volumes with similar titles, including “The Librarian of Auschwitz “, “The Midwife of Auschwitz” and “The Dressmakers of Auschwitz”, “The Last Child of Auschwitz”, “The Sisters of Auschwitz”, “The Redhead of Auschwitz” and “Lovers in Auschwitz”. Apparently the story of Lali and Gita Sokolov was not unique.
In this television tale, premiering Thursday on Peacock and soberly directed by Israeli filmmaker Tali Shalom-Ezer (“Princess”), novice writer Morris (Melanie Lynskey) becomes a character and deposes Lali at her request; She wants her story to come to light. The action alternates between scenes of her meeting and the story he tells her. Although we spend much more time in the past, the series is about both recent business and distant business.
Harvey Keitel, left, as Lali Mayor and Melanie Lynskey as Heather Morris.
(Martin Mlaka/Sky UK)
In 1942, Lali, a Slovak Jew, is sent to the sprawling Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where, after a period of disorientation, he is put to work tattooing serial numbers on the forearms of new prisoners. The job gives her some comforts (greater freedom of movement, his own room) even when he puts it in danger. “Now you work for the SS,” says SS officer Stefan Baretzki (Jonas Nay), his manager. “You will need protection. Trust me.”
One day, Lali is working at the women's camp when Gita (Anna Próchniak) comes upstairs. It's love at first sight for both of them.
“Your eyes are blue?” she asks him. (Close-up of Lali's eyes.)
“Sometimes.”
“Today they look like heaven.”
(She then asks if she can get the rose tattoo.)
We know from the beginning, evidently, that Lali will survive; Gita's fate is not explicitly stated until the end of the third episode. (“I was wondering when you were going to tell me,” Heather tells Lali.) That she also survived is not a spoiler; has been stated in every press release and promotional publication. There are other characters whose fate remains uncertain, though with a couple of exceptions we invest in them as a class, rather than as individuals. The focus is on our couple and, to some extent, on Baretzki, who, by action or inaction, makes their difficult relationship possible, because he apparently cares about Lali.
In an extraordinary moment, the drunk and disheveled SS officer holds Lali (who is worried about the sick Gita's health) and whispers: “We will get through this. I'm here for you.”
Baretzki and other ghosts haunt the current Lali; They sit next to her on the couch, look over her shoulder, watch from across the room, questioning her memory as she talks to Heather. Lali is an ordinary and unreliable narrator in the sense that she is digging up things that happened about 60 years earlier; But there are also things that she has buried protectively and that she is not prepared to face. The interludes in which the prisoners' accusatory faces silently fill the frame act as a kind of externalization of survivor's guilt. These are useful dramatic devices, but repeated over a six-hour series, they start to feel a little pat, even cheesy.
If “The Tattoo Artist” does not register as an uplifting testament to the power of the human spirit (it must be admitted, I would say) it is an honorable project, honorably done, moving at times, horrifying at others, in broad strokes. and small details. (“After the shower there will be coffee and bagels,” we hear a guard tell a new group of prisoners,” followed by Baretzki telling Lali, without irony, not to stare because it will “scare the children”). The lovers, Hauer-King and Próchniak, are sweet and sad, and Próchniak makes an especially strong impression. In terms of on-screen charisma, it's easier to see what he saw in her than what she saw in him.
Jonas Nay, left, plays Nazi officer Stefan Baretzki, who directs Lali (Jonah Hauer-King).
(Sky UK/Martin Mlaka/Sky UK)
At 84, playing an elderly Jewish man is not a stretch for Keitel, but he is quite moving (not the first word one associates with Keitel's roles), not only as a man measuring his past, but as a Lonely widower who has had an interested younger relationship. person comes into his life. When trying to get Heather to stay a while after the day's interview, he sounds like the dad or grandpa you never visit enough: “Tennis starts in 15 minutes…I bought the chips you like.” And as the mild-mannered Heather, who he becomes increasingly worried about being lost, well, it's always good to see Melanie Lynskey.
However, the most nuanced performance in the series (the most surprising, anyway) may belong to Nay. Despite the moral compromises, Gita and Lali are clear characters with simple motivations: stay alive, see each other as much as possible, help other prisoners when they can, get home, find each other. They are heroes limited by circumstances: “In this hell we are in, they only give us two options, the bad one or the worse,” a fellow prisoner tells Lali, but Baretzki, whom we have no reason to believe. Liked and many to hate, he is a tragic figure, lonely, angry, uncomfortable when she is not barking orders, in search of something resembling love, unpredictably violent and doomed to failure. That's a lot for an actor to balance, and Nay does it wonderfully well.
Although well-informed people might say otherwise, the recreation of Auschwitz seems trustworthy; and one can contemplate these evocations of life in the extermination camps with the same curiosity as if it were a documentary. Chimneys expelling black smoke cause shock. Still, we are looking at the past through a web of art, and no matter how dedicated “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” may be to getting things right, it is a translation of a work of fiction based on the memory of an experience; a filtered reality, and only a portion of it. (And questions have been raised about the veracity of Morris's novel.) The actors may have worked to take on their roles or lost weight to play the part, but none of them are really suffering, and we feel that. Despite their hardships, they are still beautiful people, as a cinematic romance would require; The producers want you to love these lovers and stay six hours until the end. (And there's a good new Barbra Streisand song.)
Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the series premieres days before Sunday's start of the week-long Holocaust Remembrance Days, established by Congress, marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. Not a year goes by without at least one Holocaust drama, and usually more, hitting the big or small screen; “We Were the Lucky Ones” concludes its run on Hulu the day “The Tattoo Artist of Auschwitz” appears. Producers make movies for all sorts of noble and less noble reasons, with greater or lesser success, but it's a good thing that these stories keep coming out, given the common waste of history, the terribly common denial of history, and a resurgent anti-Semitism that was emerging even before current events gave cover to anti-Semites.
