Wang Jiajun︱ as the image of the face and the future returning to the past: Levinas and "Son of Sol"

Chloe 2021-12-27 08:01:42

This article was originally published in "Literary Research" Issue 5, 2021

The summary of the philosophy of the main priorities of the anti-Venus, anti-centrism and other visual dimension, led to a profound reflection for the film's visual expression. In the extension to the film, the "performance ban" in Levinas' thought inspired people to treat images in a way that transcended the relationship between subject and object, turning images into a "face" in the Levinas sense. Putting "Son of Sol" in the pedigree of the Holocaust movie, you will find that it not only adheres to the performance ban to a certain extent, presents the Holocaust in darkness, but at the same time tries to let the audience see the darkness, thus showing a kind of The new testimony poetics. "Son of Sol" also shows a new "father-son relationship", which is closer to the concept of "paternity" in Levinas's later thoughts. This is a father-son relationship that is not based on kinship but on ethics. By "creating a son" for himself, Saul has found an alternative salvation and hope.

"Son of Saul" (Son of Saul) is a work of Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes. It was released in 2015 and won the Jury Grand Prix of the 68th Cannes Film Festival and the 88th Academy Award for Best Foreign language films and other important awards became the most watched films of the year. The protagonist of the film Sol is a member of the "task force" in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944. The so-called "task force" is also composed of imprisoned Jews, but they enjoy certain "privileges." They helped the Nazis manage other Jews. Some were responsible for supervising the work of other Jews, while others waited. Like Sol, they were responsible for moving the corpses, cleaning, and putting the Jews’ corpses into the crematorium. But cooperation with the Nazis did not make them survive. "On the contrary, the SS did everything possible to prevent any task force from surviving and telling the truth" [1]. The plot of the movie is as follows: One day during the routine cleaning of the corpse in the gas chamber, Sol found a boy who was still alive, but the boy was quickly killed by a Nazi officer and sent to the autopsy room; Sol risked his life to retrieve it. He hid the boy’s body privately, and tried to find a Rabbi to pray and bury the boy, but the three Rabbi he found failed to complete the burial ceremony for the boy for various reasons; in order to find the Rabbi, Sol was delayed In the face of the confusion and anger of others, Sol called the boy his own son, but his companion pointed out that he had no son at all. At the end of the film, Sol followed the escaped crowd and fled the camp. At the same time He also brought the body of his "son" and the third Rabbi he found. Ironically, the Rabbi was a fake; the Nazis were approaching, and Sol fled into the river and almost drowned. , The body of the "son" was washed away by the river; after going ashore, the escaped people were resting in a wooden house. A Polish boy accidentally found them. Seeing this boy, Sol was already in despair and numbness for the first time. A smile appeared; the boy quickly left. He brought not hope, but death. The Nazis caught up with the fugitive, and then there were several gunshots. With gunshots, the boy fled into the jungle in horror. The final scene of the film There is only a piece of green that is not lush.

"Son of Sol" stills

There is no doubt that from the subject matter, "Son of Sol" and the Jewish philosopher Levinas have a high degree of commonality. This is a story about Jews, Holocaust, survivors, death, hope, redemption, ethics and religion, about self and others, and these are all themes that Levinas is most concerned about. Levinas is one of the most influential philosophers in the study of Holocaust film. Based on this connection, we tried to interpret this movie with its thoughts.

1. "Performance prohibition" and images as faces: Levinas and the Holocaust film

Levinas’ thoughts have profoundly influenced the development of contemporary film theory. The book "Film and Ethics: The Cancelled Conflict" pointed out: "When discussing the ethical characteristics of film, the name Emmanuel Levinas It is often mentioned, and the frequency is far higher than that of any other philosopher." [2] In a nutshell, Levinas’ influence on contemporary films is mainly reflected in the following two aspects: First, the ethical issues and the relationship between ethics and ethics are strengthened. Put into film research and practice. Through this kind of putting, the relationship between actors (and subject) and characters, actors and actors, actors and directors, audiences and movies, etc. are all considered in an ethical perspective. ; Secondly, the anti-subject priority, anti-visual centralism, and the adherence and reiteration of the Judaism "idol ban" in Levinas' philosophy also deeply inspired film researchers and creators to rethink the way of film visual expression. . If replaced with Levinas' terminology, these effects can be presented as similar questions: how to present the film image as a face? How to transcend the subject-object model between the audience and the movie, and shape a face-to-face relationship between the two, or even a “proximity” relationship?

Levinas

The book "Film and Ethics: The Cancelled Conflict" uses the documentary film "The Holocaust" (Shoah, 1985) that reflects the Holocaust (Shoah, 1985) and Levinas' thoughts to explain each other [3]. Like Levinas, the director of "Holocaust" Langzman is very committed to the ban on images and performance, especially when he shows the massacre. He believes that reproducing past events often means distortion and fiction. "Lonzmann questioned the legitimacy of the performance itself, especially the legitimacy of the visual image, like Levinas. "Havoc" is often regarded as a model of anti-visual, image-phobic film trends, and responds to the expression of concentration camps. The challenge of the way." [4] For these reasons, Lanzman fiercely criticized another film "Schindler's List" that showed the Holocaust. The more detailed analysis of the book lies in linking Levinas' concept of "face" with "The Catastrophe."

First of all, "Hero" is a movie made up of faces and places. It is made up of faces and narrations of survivors, perpetrators and bystanders, as well as revisited scenes and scenes of the massacre. Faces are first presented as a content in the movie. When the perpetrators are interviewed, their faces can even be regarded as a polygraph. However, this is only the face of the surface, the face of the information medium. When we continue to gaze at those faces, the content presented by the faces becomes "anti-content." We cannot easily understand their suffering and pain from the faces of those expressionless survivors. On the contrary, the faces conceal them. At the same time, this concealment continues to stimulate us to revisit their trauma. At this time, the face has an inexhaustible connotation, "These faces refuse to be reduced to visual phenomena, sources of knowledge, and various ways of aesthetic thinking objects." "In this way, visible faces express invisible things." [5]. This fits Levinas’ definition of face: “give and cover others at the same time.” [6]

Secondly, there is also the issue of face and language. In Levinas’ philosophy, the face appears as a kind of language, and the face opens the primary language and primary expression. This expression is an unreserved revealing, a kind of sincerity. The face is the most exposed part of the human body. It directly shows the fragility of others. Levinas believes that this fragility of the face of others speaks the most important words: Don’t kill. The fragility of the face also predetermines my ethical responsibility to others. Because others are fragile, I need to be responsible to them. Therefore, for Levinas, face is first of all a language rather than an image. The face is exactly the anti-image. It resists the gaze of grasping or even enjoyment, and resists being regarded as a spectacle. It keeps on speaking, and this kind of speaking is difficult to be solidified into a certain kind of content, so as to continuously stimulate the subject's listening and the responsibility to the other. It escaped the fate of being imaged in this way. Therefore, in the appearance of the face, language obviously takes precedence over images. This also establishes a connection with "Hero": in the film, "the appearance of witnesses is first and foremost as the source of language. They are the talking face, the talking head, and the rejection is merely what we visually perceive. Object. The superiority that Lanzmann gave to hearing and vision—in order to enter the past, the oral mode is better than the viewing mode—coordinated with Levinas’ thinking" [7].

"Havoc" stills

Therefore, the face itself implies a performance ban. Face as a language's resistance or transcendence to vision is a kind of abolition of performance. For the movie "Havoc", its special subject matter and way of expression make the faces of the survivors in the movie and even the movie screen itself appear as a face that questions the audience and requires the audience to respond and be responsible (response). It "invites me to read the face of the survivor... as the words of the survivor, then the screen of the movie opens/ leads to a face in the sense of Levinas’ ethics, which makes the attention beyond itself and leads The unrecoverable otherness of images"[8]. This otherness refers not only to the unrecoverable trauma suffered by the survivors, but also to the countless faces behind the faces of the survivors, that is, those who can no longer speak, can no longer manifest, and have died in the massacre. The face of the person.

However, although both Lanzmann and Levinas abide by the performance ban, the film is presented visually after all. Fundamentally speaking, what the performance ban brings is not the abolition of all performances. On the contrary, it is to rescue images and images from the fate of being solidified as pure objects or spectacles, so that they can find ethics and sacredness again. Dimension. Or, as Levinas’ "disciple" Jean-Luc Marion said, let the image be liberated from the "modern despotism of the image as the norm of things" [9], and the image can be turned into an "icon." Rather than saying that Levinas’ ethics restricts visual performance, it inspires us to look at and create images in a different light. As DN Rodowick said:

The transcendental power of the face, as the priority of ethics to ontology, calls for a responsiveness that respects the other. This response requires me to give up my control, dominance, or occupy the other as an image. . Therefore, what Levinasian film philosophy seeks in the concept of face is the meaning of an image that neither seeks control nor grasps what it represents. It is a way of encountering others through images. It neither reflects on others, nor does it project our self-concept against them. [10]

This kind of perspective no longer treats the image as merely an object for the subject to capture or enjoy the landscape, but as a trace of the other, so that the film presents the invisible or the thing that is always deconstructing the visibility, that is, the other. opposite sex. In this sense, Levinas’ ethics “inspires us to look at the images on the screen in a different light...no longer use images as a tool of use...no longer reduce the other to a projection of ourselves; imagine one An ethical optics (optics), illuminating the visible and the invisible at the same time" [11]. In this change of perspective, Levinas’ thoughts have changed our attitude towards films and images, and at the same time, movies have also expanded Levinas’ thoughts.

2. "Son of Thor": Witness the power of darkness and images

The connection between Levinas' thoughts and "Holocaust" and the Holocaust film can actually be extended to a broader category of "witness movies", which often refers to an event that has disappeared and is difficult to be reproduced. Levinas' forbidden aesthetics and other-oriented ethics can be connected with many events in human history and society. The Nazi Holocaust is of course the most typical and most catastrophic event. "The Death of Saul" should be placed in the pedigree of this witness film for analysis. Li Yang once sorted out the development context of Western Holocaust movies, and divided them into "Alan Renai's "Night and Fog" as the representative of the revelation period, "The Catastrophe" as the representative of the reflection period and "Schindler's List" "Is the representative performance period" [12]. "Son of Sol" is undoubtedly one of the most representative Holocaust films in the post-"Schindler List" period. Lanzman also appreciates it very much. List of """[13]. Based on this historical positioning, the comparison with Schindler’s List can undoubtedly deepen the understanding of "Son of Sol".

The two movies are not without similarities, such as "concentration camps, barbed wire, suitcases, slopes, gas chambers, cremators, smoke and piles of corpses" and other images frequently appear in both movies. They "benefit from The image memory accumulated during the Lei Nai period and Lanzmann period" [14]. In addition, although "Son of Sol" does not use black and white film like "Schindler's List", it uses 35mm silver salt photosensitive film, deliberately discarding the clarity of digital shooting, presenting a more realistic and heavy texture. [15]. However, compared with the historical sense of black and white film, the director of "Son of Sol" Nimes pursues the "touch" of film: "The key is to touch the emotions of the audience-this is something digital photography can't do. All of this Both mean a light as simple as possible... the field of vision keeps the gaze at a distance, always surrounding him at the same height as the character." [16] In the end, both films follow the performance to some extent The ban hardly presents the cruel picture of the massacre itself.

Of course, the difference between "Son of Sol" and "Schindler's List" is also very obvious. The latter is essentially a Hollywood blockbuster, with a clear narrative pattern, obvious transitions, and many dramatic performances. At the end of the film, The Jews were saved, and Schindler and the "humanity" it represented were also saved. Schindler is certainly more complicated and real than the heroes or superheroes in ordinary Hollywood movies, but from the perspective of characterization, he is not far from similar Hollywood movies. In contrast, Sol is obviously not connected with the hero. He was a special task force who cooperated with the Nazis to a large extent and participated in the murder of his compatriots. His erratic behavior was not understood by others, which delayed the escape plan of his companions and affected The survival of others even led to the killing of several people. As his teammates said to him: "You are a dead person, disregarding the life of the living." And his plan ultimately failed. From the perspective of ordinary people, he is a complete loser, and he has no particular shining features in personality and morality.

"Schindler's List" stills

In terms of narrative mode and visual presentation, the two films are also quite different. Although "Son of Sol" also uses a linear sequence of narratives, since Sol's actions seem to lack logic, the whole movie is more like a sleepwalking of a man in hell, and appears to be fragmented. Coupled with the constantly switching, inverted, and swaying visual presentations, the audience feels more the urgency, danger and immersive sense of reality that the film is trying to convey. But the story told based on this "real" texture is actually more dramatic than "Schindler's List". As Didi-Huberman said, the plot of the film is similar to a fable: after a man discovers a miracle (that is, the survival of the "son"), he tries to do the impossible. It’s just that, in traditional fables, after three times, the ending of the story will change substantially, but in "Son of Sol", it failed three times. The encounter of finding the Rabbi three times seems to be just to further thwart Sol. Let him lose hope, which makes the film more similar to the modern fables of Kafka and Beckett. Although the film strives to render a sense of reality and even immersion, a kind of realism that constructs "unimaginable historical facts" [17], a little reflection will reveal that the film is somewhat "fantasy", and Sol goes deep into it again and again. Escape from danger is impossible if it does not rely on coincidences or even miracles.

From a shooting point of view, the shooting position of "Schindler's List" maintains an "objective" distance from the characters and scenes, so that the audience can grasp the overall situation, while the shooting position of "Son of Sol" usually follows Sol. Movement, the camera is almost level with him, often very close, which creates a sense of urgency and alienation. This perspective is very different from Schindler’s List. It is no longer a kind of viewing at a suitable distance. “In this space surrounded by fear, in this distance and short duration, the only possible viewing, It can only be the kind of restrained viewing that quickly looks down on the ground after witnessing death" [18]. This cramped perception of urgency and fear is rendered in both time and space. As Primo Levi said, in the concentration camp, “not only do we have no time to be afraid, but there is even no space for fear” [19] . If the characters in "Schindler's List" are still in purgatory, then the characters in "Son of Sol" have fallen into hell.

"Son of Sol" stills

As a film that shows the Holocaust, "Son of Sol" also cannot avoid performance issues. The massacre was difficult or even impossible to express, which led Didi-Ubermann to call it a "black hole" [20]. In the face of this black hole, the most "orthodox" performance strategy is to "let this'black hole' into a'sage among saints', a ghost space that cannot be approached, touched, unimagined, and cannot be described, dedicated to the kingdom of darkness. "[twenty one]. This is a strategy of prohibiting performance, a strategy of performance by prohibiting performance. This strategy was not only shared by Lanzmann and Levinas, but also continued in Lyotard's sublime aesthetics, especially his interpretation of the Jewish abstract expressionist painter Newman. In Germany, which is closer to the aftershocks of the Holocaust, Adorno also chose a similar strategy, "to prioritize the'perfect black' he observed into the label of so-called'radical' art"[22], and believes that this The "perfect black" art is a possible visual answer to the Holocaust[23]. "Son of Sol" both inherits and surpasses this model, saying that it inherits because it still adheres to the principle that the Holocaust itself cannot be directly expressed. The film opens with nearly 10 seconds of silent darkness, and then transitions to a blurred scene, accompanied by groans, whistles and footsteps, and the final scene ends with a silent jungle like darkness. On the other hand, this is another film full of colors. The film "shows that this hell is a hell with colors: the color of people who have just died, the color of Sol’s face (like the color of people who have been dead for a long time). )... In sharp contrast to this is the green of the birch trees in the forest in late autumn of 1944. And don’t forget the black of the coal in the fire, and of course the black of the closed gate" [24]. Here, black has become a part of color. It is through these colors that the director allows us to see the darkness. Didi Huberman said more thoroughly that the director "makes a kind of light in the indulging "black hole": do A kind of light can be seen to see the black hole, so that it can unfold itself in a visible form" [25]. If the negative expression advocated by Adorno or Lyotard is to express the inexpressible in darkness or abstraction (that is, non-expression), then "Son of Sol" seems to have added another negation. The negation of color, that is, color and light, come to let us see the darkness and lead us to the invisible behind the darkness. This is a kind of progress. Darkness can only be seen as darkness. Darkness cannot be equated with invisibleness. On the contrary, the distinction between darkness and light already depends on a kind of visibility. Therefore, to lead the darkness to the invisibility behind it, we need to see the darkness first, and only through the light can we see dark. In terms of specific art history, abstract expressionism and other schools do have value in the performance of the Holocaust. However, excessive abstraction has only allowed us to see the abstract and not the darkness, or we can only see the abstract darkness. , And must rely on explanation to see. As contemporary people gradually move away from the history of the Holocaust, it becomes more and more difficult to truly see this darkness, and the explanation will become more and more abstract and far-fetched. In this context, we really need to see the darkness in a more intuitive way and look through the darkness to the invisible behind it. The director of "Son of Sol" is trying to do just that.

In the film, the darkness of course basically points to the Holocaust, but it also points to the fourth film taken in August 1944 by an unknown Nazi contingent from the Auschwitz concentration camp No. 5 crematorium. a photograph. He took pictures of the Nazis burning corpses, and became a testimony to the atrocities of the Nazis. Since it was taken in an extremely urgent situation, the composition of the photo is irregular and the sharpness is not high. But precisely because of this, the photo reflects the urgency and fear at the moment of taking the photo, and presents a special style. For example, when he was shooting the Nazis burning corpses in the open-air crematorium, he secretly photographed them from behind the door frame. The surroundings of the screen were enveloped by the darkness of the door frame and the interior of the room, and the center was the scene of the corpse being burned. This photo intuitively reflects what Didi Huberman said "make a kind of light". The camera seems to open a corner in a dark curtain, allowing us to see the scene of burning the corpse and the darkness under the sun. . These photos gave a lot of inspiration to Nemesch. He put the plot of this photo directly into the film. More importantly, they also affected the expression style of the film. The film reproduced the concentration camp to a large extent. From these photos, the sense of urgency and urgency conveyed by the movie, as well as the defocus and blur from time to time, can easily remind us of these photos.

"Son of Sol" stills: shooting scenes of burning corpses

These photos are one of the most precious evidences of Nazi crimes, and they can be regarded as the earliest "witness" art. Didi-Huberman said that the photo “leaves us with double evidence: dark evidence, or shadow evidence, it constructs a closed dead space...with the aid of the lens, it realizes his unique viewing Right. In addition, this is also a kind of evidence of light. This is a standard photographic act that makes the things that the Nazis want to disappear absolutely visible and shocks the eyes of the world" [26]. In this sense, images are powerful, and we can save them from being devalued as idols by Levinas. The image here is no longer something that should be forbidden, on the contrary, it is something that breaks the taboo. The moment the contingent pressed the shutter, he broke the taboo of the concentration camp and used it to resist and expose the Nazis' lies-that is the most hypocritical image. The imitation of the style of these four photographs in "Son of Sol" obviously also tries to show the appeal of such a testimony and the power of the image, which comes to a large extent from the tactile relationship established between the image and the audience. This tactile relationship comes not only from the texture or "tonality" of the image, but also from the content of the visual expression-Sol’s pursuit, Sol’s actions, and Sol’s body, especially the pale, tired, numb, and frightened image , Always worrying, and sometimes showing hope.

The film blurs the environment and approaches the expression style of the characters, magnifying the physicality of the characters, and in the tactile association established by the image, the image itself also has the physicality. It is this kind of performance that transforms the relationship between the audience and the image from a subject-object relationship to an emotional and ethical relationship between subjects. In this sense, the performance of "Son of Sol" and Levinas's thoughts do not conflict, but are in agreement with each other. Levinas's depreciation of images, especially images in art, is that it isolates reality, especially the ethical relationship between people, and becomes a kind of cold sculpture and idol. When it returns to reality and humanity, and establishes an ethical emotional connection with the viewer, it also has vitality and becomes an ethical discourse. In Levinas, this kind of discourse is not used as a rational medium, but as a perceptual trigger and touch that occurs between the self and the other. The sincere revealing and gestures of facial expressions are like "greeting others and shaking hands"[27], like an unsuspecting touch. Only in this kind of tangible intimacy can we approach the other that is sexualized and irreplaceable. So Levinas said: The face is a kind of "incarnation language" [28]. The face and body exposed the fragility of others. The crisis, urgency and worry we felt when watching "Son of Sol" were largely aroused by Sol’s face, body, and the bodies of other Jewish victims. . Levinas’ concept of “face” cannot be understood by sticking to the actual face. Any part of the body can be regarded as “face” as long as it arouses people’s ethical emotions or expresses itself as an ethical discourse. . For this reason, Levinas specifically used Vasily Grossman’s novel "Life and Destiny" as an example. The novel mentions that in Lubyanka’s prison, prisoners line up in a straight line and can pass through the necks of the people in front of them. Read his feelings and hope in his sorrow [29]. The neck is now the "face". There are also scenes of Sol’s neck in the film. In this movie with few lines, don’t we read Sol’s fear, sorrow, and hope from his face, neck and back? Wasn't Saul's responsibility for the "son" largely motivated by the child's white and tender body? He has been carefully wiping and caring for the "son"'s body, keeping him clean, and wanting him to be buried spotlessly.

There are multiple shots of Thor's neck in "Son of Thor"

"Son of Sol" stills: Sol wipes his son's body

Our faces reveal the vulnerability of others, which arouses our worry and responsibility for others. On the other hand, when facing each other, we also become vulnerable and susceptible, so that we can worry about others at any time and be treated for others. Inspired by and entangled by their responsibilities, they become "hostages" to others, even if they are just the others in the image. "Hostage of others" is exactly the ethical subject expounded in Levinas' late philosophy. When "Son of Sol" turns us into such a subject, the movie also becomes a face.

Three, a different kind of fatherhood and hope

The above analysis mainly analyzes the connection between "Son of Sol" and Levinas' thought from the perspective of performance or visual presentation, but the greater connection between the two lies in the theme. The themes represented in the film—death, witness, survival, responsibility, religion, father-son relationship, hope and salvation, etc., are also the most important themes in Levinas’ philosophy. The ambiguity of image expression and the openness of Levinas' thoughts enable the comparison and interpretation of the two to expand our thinking on these issues.

The first thing that comes into view is of course the issue of death. The whole movie is shrouded in the shadow of death. These task forces deal with the dead every day, and they may die at any time. The core of this story, as Didi Huberman said, is to save a dead person, a child who has already died. [30]. In such a seemingly absurd behavior, one can hear the echoes of Western literary classics and traditions. Whether it is "Antigone" or "Hamlet", the core of the narrative or the main motivation of the action is to save a dead person and make him Can be slapped or buried. The purpose of saving the dead is also to save the living, the living must do their responsibilities for the dead, and only the living after the dead can be saved. In these works, the living are entangled by the dead, becoming hostages and replacements for the other, the dead, who can no longer respond, and their duty is to enable the dead to be buried in dignity, etiquette, and faith. . "Son of Thor" more bluntly shows the process of the living being responsible for the dead. The whole story revolves around the burial of the "son" of Sol. So, why did Thor want to bury his "son"? Furthermore, why does Sol need to be saved in this way? What is he trying to save?

The answer is implicit in one of Sol's lines. When Sol’s teammate Abraham said, “The two of us will kill everyone,” Sol replied: “We are dead.” This sentence can be interpreted from many angles. First of all, what we immediately think of is that in the face of inhuman life in concentration camps, most lives are not as good as death, and there are even what Levi calls "living dead", that is, people who have no will to survive and are just alive. In this sense Above, it can be said that many people in the concentration camps are still alive, but they are already dead. Secondly, for those task forces with a surviving conscience, the feeling of "life is better than death" may be even greater, because in addition to being victims of concentration camps, they are also perpetrators of their own compatriots. Levinas pointed out when explaining death that all living people should have a sense of guilt for surviving the dead. My respect for someone who no longer responds is already a sense of guilt for survivors. [31]. In Levinas’s view, it is this survivor’s guilt that reveals human nature[32], and this guilt will also be transferred to those living neighbors—the dying or the dying. In the human body, the surviving guilt is more effectively converted into ethics. This view of Levinas is undoubtedly closely related to his experience of surviving Nazi persecution. For those survivors who have truly experienced the Holocaust, this feeling of guilt is even more painful. As a survivor, Levi described this feeling like this:

I live, and the price may be the death of another person; I live to replace another person's position; I live, I usurp another person's right to life, in other words, kill another person. ...The worst survived, that is, those who adapted the most to the environment; and the best died. [33]

For survivors, the guilt not only comes from the fact that others are dead and "I" is still alive, but also that the death of others is related to "I". To some extent, "I" caused the death of others and was a murderer. . The guilt of surviving victims like Levi is still so strong. For those "perpetrators"-contingents, if they still have a conscience, the pain of guilt can be imagined. They have to face the trial of the living (Nazis). They may be on the execution ground one day. "The first task of each task force is to burn the body of their predecessor"[34], and even face the dead. At the trial, Saul "always was a surviving judge" [35]. Before discovering the "son", Sol had seen too many dead people, and worked day after day to deal with the corpses. The state of this numb machine was similar to that of the "dead". But even if the miracle of "son"'s survival lasted only a few minutes, it made him hope to rekindle and his conscience to regain, so he wanted to bury "son". This burial was not only to save the "son", but also to save himself, but in fact, what Saul wanted to save was "humanity" and his identity as a human being.

In addition, Saul is a Jew, and the process of retrieving his "human" identity is also the process of retrieving "Jew" identity, so he stubbornly wanted to find the Rabbi. The process of burying the "son", searching for the Rabbi, reshaping the Jewish identity, and "being" is essentially the same process. In this regard, we can give Saul's seemingly irrational and absurd actions a kind of tragic heroic color and national consciousness. On the one hand, the purpose of the Nazis in setting up task forces was that they needed these people to help them manage concentration camps and improve efficiency. On the other hand, by allowing Jews to kill Jews, they could further disintegrate the spirit and beliefs of Jews and prove that Jews can survive in order to survive. The unscrupulous "inferior races" "will accept any fate and humiliation, even if they destroy themselves" [36]. In this way, the Nazis wanted to destroy the Jews’ bodies as well as their spirits. Therefore, it can be said that Sol's actions are not only to retrieve the dignity of human nature through the struggle of the individual, but also to reshape the national spirit that has been trampled on. In the face of the evils of the Nazis and the contingent itself, Sol chose a different method of resistance from his teammates. If other contingents tried to fight for freedom through violent escape, it was a kind of resistance facing the future. Sol chose a resistance to the past. He wanted to find Jewish traditions, find the Rabbi to recite prayers, and let the "son" be buried in the ground in accordance with Jewish rituals. In a sense, the "son" represents all the Jews who were murdered. Let the "son" be buried. The original intention is to make the "son" different from those Jews who have been buried in mass graves and cremators. At the same time, " The burial and redemption of the "son" is also a redemption for those Jews who have been slaughtered and buried at will. Retrieving the tradition also retrieves the dignity, faith, and spirit of the Jews. Those "dead" and "dying people", including Thor, also have their soul destinations. Although all this is probably only Sol’s unconscious behavior, there is no doubt that for Sol, returning to his own religion and traditions and finding a Rabbi is the only hope and salvation. It can save at least two “already” at the same time. "The Dead": "Son of Sol" and Sol himself.

"Son of Sol" stills

Ironically, Sol's actions were unsuccessful, and the "son" was ultimately unable to be buried, and the body disappeared in the river. This is a profound plot. Didi Huberman pointed out that this story is just the opposite of the story of the Jewish national leader Moses. The latter is the story of a child rescued from the water[37], and the former is a death. The story of a child sinking into the water. Is this an irony? Does it symbolize the fate of the Jews? However, hope did not end here. When Sol and his team fled to the shore, he suddenly saw a little boy, which made him smile for the first time. Is this little boy the ghost of "son"? He appeared in a hallucinatory way when Sol was most hopeless, bringing Sol comfort. Later stories tell us that this is not a "son of Sol", but a little Polish boy. With his coming, Sol's death finally came. Ironically, the movie always seems to "play" the characters and the audience between hope and disappointment.

"Son of Sol" stills: the son's body floats along the river

"Son of Sol" stills: the last time the child's face appeared in the film

Did Sol really fail? After all, he took the "son" out of the concentration camp and the crematorium, and smiled in the last scene of "before his death". Regarding Sol’s self-salvation and the salvation of the “son”, we don’t need to judge its success based on actual results. The initiation of this action itself already represents a kind of commitment, a kind of freedom, and a kind of “possibility”. Exceeded, and Sol never gave up on this action, nor did he hesitate or flinch. It can be said that this is already a success in itself. Through his actions, Sol created a "father-son relationship" for himself, no matter what the outcome, this relationship has completely changed and sublimated Sol, and even gave him hope and salvation. This is reminiscent of Levinas' exposition of the "father-son relationship". "Father-son relationship" or "paternité" (paternité) is an important concept in Levinas' philosophy. It refers to a relationship in which oneself is separated from oneself or transcends oneself. Coming from and detaching from "I", which brings about a completely new relationship between self and self. Due to the birth of the son, this relationship between self and oneself becomes one between self and the other. As the other from "I", the son liberated "I" from his own shackles, and brought a kind of real future time and real hope to "I". Through the son, the subject has also defeated death. Death is no longer insurmountable. As a new life and new time, the son has actually passed death instead of "I". Through fertility and sons, the self is no longer the self destined to return to itself, and the self becomes different from itself [38]. As this bondage is lifted, the self becomes free, "therefore, the generation of freedom and the occurrence of time are not based on the category of causation, but the category of the father" [39].

On the surface, Saul’s situation almost runs counter to Levinas’s explanation of “paternality”. First of all, this "son" is not obtained through birth, but through identification; secondly, in the film, "son" obviously does not represent the future and new life, on the contrary, he has died. So, how does Sol get salvation and hope from this "father-son" relationship? We may get the answer from Levinas' revision of the "paternal" thought in his later years. In the preface written in 1979 for "Time and the Other" published more than 30 years ago, he reflected on his early concept of "paternity" and pointed out that the "paternity" at that time was still constrained by kinship. Or confined to a narrow concept of "fertility", so the possibility and transcendence given by the son still remain with the father, that is, the subject or self [40]. However, the late Levinas thought about another possibility: the possibility of "non-indifférence". This word is a pun, and some domestic scholars have translated it as "Although different but not sparse"[41]. Through semantic transformation, Levinas gradually transformed the term from "non-indifference" at the ontological level to "non-indifferent" at the ethical level, and helped his ethics to transcend ontological appeals. This new possibility of transcendence is "a possibility of transcending possible through the son", and "this non-indifferent transcendence" does not come from the social rules governing kinship, but is likely to create In other words, the transcendence from the son is no longer dependent on the kinship. On the contrary, the fatherhood and the father-son relationship are firstly on the ethical level, rather than on the kinship level, and even more on the non-physical level. It is ethics that creates kinship and social rules, rather than the latter creating the former. A benevolent kinship, a friendly society, is the result rather than the prerequisite of the ethics of non-indifference and accountability for the other. If there is no ethics, kinship is not necessarily benevolent, society is not necessarily friendly, and sons do not necessarily represent the future and hope. For Levinas and most people, a future without ethics is hopeless. Therefore, he said: "Through this non-indifference,'exceeding the possibility' is possible for the self." [43] Exceeding at this time no longer depends on fertility and kinship, but first and foremost. Yu Fei-indifferent ethics, kinship has a reason, and ethics is "an-archic" in Levinas. As a common term in Levinas' late period, "unreasonable" indicates the unreasonable and inevitable responsibilities of others.

Doesn't this prove Sol's story? The arrival of Saul's "son" is not based on fertility or kinship, but on the basis of non-indifference, non-indifferent, non-ignorance of this child, and this has no reason. Although the child died soon, Saul firmly held on to his unlimited responsibility to the child and neighbors, and wanted to bury him, regardless of his own safety. In the face of the responsibility of burying his son, Saul has already put his life and death aside. For him, this responsibility has already surpassed life and death, and surpassed the possibility. According to Heidegger’s argument, death is understood as "the most self-relevant and insurmountable possibility" [44]-the grasp of death is the grasp of possibility. "Understand that to plan life toward death and grasp the possibility, then Sol has already surpassed this possibility. He is not without planning, he has been planning for the burial of the "son", but the deadline for this planning is not the personal death of Saul, but the goal of "burying for others" or "saving". At the same time, this goal also points to a return to Jewish traditions, Jewish beliefs, and the Jews' own genealogy and time. Therefore, Thor has already surpassed life to death, and also surpassed death. Through this action and this ethics, Saul recreated the rules of society in a personal way, rejoined the Jewish genealogy, returned to the Jewish spirit, and regained humanity. In this non-indifferent burial for the other, Sol is not so much adhering to a kind of "paternality" as it is a kind of "motherhood". In his later philosophy, Levinas explained his ethics as "motherhood": the responsibility of the other, like a pregnant mother, is always disturbed and torn by the child in the womb, and it is unavoidable. Responsibility, this inescapability is as inevitable as physical pain. This non-indifferent ethics "is torn from itself... it is a kind of motherhood, the pregnancy of the other in the same" [45]. It can also be said that Saul embraced the non-indifference and unlimited responsibility of being the other, and "concerned" a son/other "for no reason". This kind of childbirth has completely transcended the father-son relationship as kinship.

Didi-Huberman commented: "The entire authority of Saul is to face the world and its cruelty upstream, creating all the fragments into a child, and he is actually dead."[46] His method of creation is not to put his son in the future, but to put him in the past, allowing him to be buried in the traditional way, to find him the Jewish genealogy, and to allow him to be saved and find hope in the return to the past. In this movie, hope no longer points to the future, but to the past, or to the future by returning to the past. In this way, Sol, in the extreme darkness and disasters, in the extinction of the future of the Jews (the simplest and most rude way to extinction in the future is to exterminate children), turning the "future death" into " The dead future". The dead future becomes a future that can be mourned and prayed in the connection with the past, and in mourning and prayer, this future seems to be resurrected.

Annotation

[1][33][34][36] Primo Levi: "The Submerged and Saved", translated by Yang Chenguang, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore 2013 Edition, p. 38, p. 81-82, p. 38 Page, page 39.

[2][3][4][5][7][8] Lisa Downing and Libby Saxton: "Film and Ethics: The Cancelled Conflict", translated by Liu Yuqing, Chongqing University Press, 2019 edition, Page 128, Page 131, Page 131, Page 140, Page 141, Page 141.

[6][38][39] Immanuel Levinas: "Time and the Other", translated by Wang Jiajun, Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 2020 edition, p. 67, p. 87-88, p. 88.

[9] Jean-Luc Macion (Marion): "The Crossing of Sights", translated by Zhang Jianhua, (Taiwan) Christian Literature Publishing Co., Ltd. 2010 Edition, p. 110.

[10] DN Rodovich: "Ethics in Film Philosophy: Cavill, Deleuze and Levinas", translated by Liao Hongfei, https://www.sohu.com/a/273640493_252534. Quotation slightly changed .

[11] Lisa Downing and Libby Saxton: "Film and Ethics: The Cancelled Conflict", p.144. The citation has been slightly changed.

[12][14][15] Li Yang: "The History and Ethical Dilemma of Western Holocaust Films", George Didi-Huberman: "Out of the Darkness: To "Son of Sol", translated by Li Yang, Guangxi People's Publishing House 2019 edition, p. 73, p. 84, p. 84.

[13] Jonathan Romney, “Dead Man Walking”, https://www.filmcomment.com/article/son-of-saul-lazlo-nemes-pro/.

[16] [19] Quoted from George Diddy-Huberman: "Out of the Darkness: To "Son of Sol", p. 17, p. 13.

[17][18][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][30][35][46] George Didi-Huberman: "Out of the Darkness: Writing To "Son of Sol", page 15, page 18, page 6, page 6, page 6, page 6-7, page 8, page 8, page 8-9, page 20 Pages, page 30, page 38.

[27] Emmanuel Lévinas, “Paul Celan, de l'être à l'autre”, Noms Propres, Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1976, p. 52.

[28] Emmanuel Levinas: "Totality and Infinity: On Externality", translated by Zhu Gang, Peking University Press, 2016 edition, p. 190.

[29] Emmanuel Lévinas, "L'Autre Utopie et Justice", Entre nous: essais sur le penser-à-l'autre, Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle, 1991, p. 244.

[31] Emmanuel Levinas (Levinas): "God·Death and Time", translated by Yu Zhongxian, Life·Reading·Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore 1997 edition, p. 9.

[32] Levinas: "Philosophy, Justice and Love", translated by Deng Gang, edited by Gao Xuanyang: "French Thought Review" Volume III, Tongji University Press, 2008 edition, pages 299-300.

[37] The name of Moses means "pulled up from the water" in Hebrew. The baby Moses was put in a basket and drifted on the water. Pharaoh's daughter rescued him from the water and named him.

[40] [42] [43] See Immanuel Levinas: "Time and the Other" "Foreword", page lvi, page lvi, page lvi.

[41] See Levinas: "On the God Who Came to Ideas", translated by Wang Heng and Wang Shisheng, The Commercial Press, 2019 edition, p.26.

[44] Heidegger: "Existence and Time", translated by Chen Jiaying and Wang Qingjie, edited by Xiong Wei, revised by Chen Jiaying, Life·Reading·Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore 2006 edition, p.288.

[45] Emmanuel Lévinas, Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1978, p. 121.

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Extended Reading

Son of Saul quotes

  • Abraham Warszawski: Who's this boy?

    Saul Ausländer: My son.

    Abraham Warszawski: But you have no son.

    Saul Ausländer: I do. I have to bury him.

    Abraham Warszawski: You don't need a rabbi for that.

    Saul Ausländer: At least he'll do what's right.

  • Saul Ausländer: I have to take care of my son. He's not from my wife.

    Abraham Warszawski: When did you last see him?

    [pause]

    Abraham Warszawski: You have no son.