Q&A: UCLA’s Tom Nunan talks Academy Award nominee ‘Son of Saul’

In the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz, where there is hope for neither survival nor redemption, a Sonderkommando becomes obsessed with giving one boy a proper burial. The Sonderkommando, a prisoner who helps Nazis by working in the gas chambers, suspects the boy is his son, and will endure any danger to salvage a speck of dignity for the departed.

This constitutes the premise of “Son of Saul,” one of this year’s Academy Award nominees for best Foreign Language Film. The film will be screened at James E. Bridges Theater in UCLA Tuesday, followed by a Q&A with the film’s director Laszlo Nemes and lead actor Geza Rohrig.

The Daily Bruin’s Sadia Khalid caught up with the event’s host, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television lecturer Tom Nunan, who shared his thoughts on the event and the uniqueness of the film.

Daily Bruin: Why did you choose to bring this particular film to UCLA among all the other films nominated in the best Foreign Language Film category?

Tom Nunan: I’ve actually never hosted a foreign film nominee before at UCLA or elsewhere. However, I was so struck by the magnificence, magnitude and originality of this movie that, when given the opportunity, I gladly accepted the offer to help bring the movie to UCLA.

DB: How do you think the students will benefit from this film? What will they take away from this experience?

TN: The students of film and storytelling will be deeply impacted. They will also be deeply moved by the experience as human beings. There had been many movies about war, and I’ve never seen such an intimate and compelling approach to filmmaking about the horrors of war as this one … By horror, I’m not necessarily referring to exclusively the visual evidence of human suffering. When I speak of horror, I’m talking about the emotional, psychological and spiritual devastation of such monstrous acts of one human against another. The movie is not without some moments of visual tragedy.

DB: The film was almost entirely shot near the point of view of the protagonist. Did the claustrophobia deteriorate its visual appeal?

TN: The intimate nature of the film at first feels very uncomfortable because it’s so close for so long, as though we were passengers on the shoulder of the protagonist. It’s almost unbearable. And what’s more unbearable than life as a prisoner in a concentration camp?

DB: How did the new director and actor duo add to the overall aesthetic of the film?

TN: The filmmaker (Laszlo) made other award-winning projects before and the actor (Geza) is a well-known poet from Hungary. So both of these artists were on an upward trajectory in their creative careers. That said, I suspect their open minds and pure commitment to this story only added to the energy and the integrity of the film.

DB: What does the story of the Sonderkommandos signify in today’s world?

TN: The Sonderkommandos is translated as ‘secret keepers.’ You can say in a perverse way in today’s standards, they are the equivalent of bystanders. People who are more concerned with their own survival than that of someone who’s being persecuted right in front of their eyes.

DB: What aspect of this film did you like most and if you had to critique one aspect, what would it be?

TN: What I think makes this movie such a success creatively is the feeling that this is as close to reality as a documentary of what happened. As impossible as that sounds, they were able to accomplish this through the breathtaking visuals, performances, sounds and camera style.

If I could be at all critical about anything, I would say it’s less any failure on the filmmaker’s part, but more on the lines of promotion and marketing. Why don’t more people know about this movie? Why aren’t more people going to see this film? Is it the name of the movie? Is it the marketing campaign?

DB: Maybe the language is a barrier for most people.

TN: Well then it’s their loss. They can’t suddenly make this an English film. It’s an important movie and I daresay it can be a life-changing experience.

Compiled by Sadia Khalid, A&E contributor.