A moral beauty unique to twentieth-century culture—the beauty of rebellion, a culture that even makes viewers stand with them, share their destiny, and dedicate themselves to the struggle to transform theirs. Accompanied by unreserved respect and admiration for them, they display a truly capricious nobility.
And today when we talk about the twentieth century, we are almost only willing to talk about/show the baseness/darkness of human nature, we keep talking about Auschwitz, those who made/detained.
Son of Saul touches on an aspect rarely touched on in previous narratives: a concentration camp where tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of prisoners (Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, homosexuals, GCDs from all over the world) were held, with only a few Ten Germans and Nazis were in charge. So who played their assistants in it, those criminals most obviously, a large number of prisoners engaged in the day-to-day work of the extermination camp.
A fact we often discuss is the darkness of humanity displayed by the Nazis, which makes us no longer be able to believe in the ideals, beliefs, and utopias that civilization has created for us.
(In the last century, there are also many examples of positive depictions of Nazis, such as "The Shadow Comes" 1941.)
There used to be a diary of a young Nazi who specialized in the extermination of Jews. The first third of the diary was that he had not yet joined the army/joined the Nazis, a German student at Hobburg University in Germany. It recorded how he read poetry and studied philosophy. How to share the noble civilization and elegance of human beings.
Then, hardly overdone, he began to describe how many corpses were dragged out on a given day, how high the fertility rate of the Jews was, the appropriation of the world's resources, and the defilement of our blood, especially the Germanic peoples, and other lies.
All the clichés and atrocities are recorded in his complacent tone, how can we trust a highly educated, a sensitive young man who once had experience in German philosophy/literature, or even the highest achievements of European civilization Man, become such a cold-blooded killer. When we discuss the fact that human nature is really dark, we can think of people in concentration camps who participated in the killing in order to live an extra day.
The story of Auschwitz cannot be told, largely due to the general silence of the survivors, usually two basic explanations are: 1. The experience of Auschwitz has gone beyond all our civilization/imagination, with As for our inability to experience it. 2. Metaphysically, every survivor must be questioned and criticized by society. How did you survive? Surviving became a guilt.
Either believe that all the people around you are evil and sad, and that all emotional connections are unreliable. Either believe they are right and I am wrong, and if I believe I am wrong, it means that I have given up a lifetime of beliefs and conduct, which is the most terrifying experience.
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