AP PHOTO Macau Daily Times | Edition 2462 | 18 Dec 2015 Scuba paradise in the open Pacific Most travellers to the Marshall Islands are scuba divers that go there on their way to the World War II wrecks found around Palau and the Micronesian island state of Chuuk. Midway between Hawaii and Australia, there's little tourism there, but plenty to see below the surface Untamed by Cam X3 Books: A Ghost’s Story by Lorna Gibb Music: Wine: The Cisalpine Ethos Movies: Son of Saul Food: a modern Take on Japanese Tradition X2 PÁTIO DA ILUSÃO illusion DRIVE IN Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer BOOK IT the barbaric tasks he's forced HOLOCAUST TALE 'SON OF SAUL' to commit. But whether his HE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF quest to give this boy some T ‘ ’ HAUNTS AND PROVOKES final respect is one of sin- cerity, a selfish, desperate KATIE KING attempt to regain some hu- manity or a manifestation of his madness is a question that AP PHOTO only the viewer can answer. One fellow prisoner accuses him of favoring the dead at the expense of the living. It's hard to argue with that. Saul is both selfish and selfless and maybe, ultimately, he's neither. But confusion is the only reality here. No one speaks the same language — a subtlety lost in subtitles — and order only further dissol- ves as the film progresses. The filmmaking is extraor- dinary and somehow, merci- fully, not as visually exploi- tative as it could have been. Nemes, in his first feature, is a bold, experimental voice with Christian Harting, left, and Geza Rohrig in a scene from "Son of Saul" a clear vision — a filmmaker to watch and study for years on of Saul" doesn't just get We rarely leave Saul's point planning a rebellion of some to come. under your skin — it goes of view. In this way, the film sorts — doing what they can Ultimately, the nebulous Sstraight to the bloodstream. feels like one long tracking to document the atrocities, morality of everyone here There, it churns and festers as shot. The camera watches him which the Nazis take care to makes "Son of Saul" a fas- you try to make sense out of from the front and follows obfuscate as best they can, cinating investigation, but in “A Ghost’s Story”, by Lorna Gibb (Granta) the senseless horror of the Ho- him from behind — we grow and coordinating with a con- some ways an unsatisfying ne spring night in 1848, in Hydesville, New York, two bored locaust and the plight of the accustomed to recognizing tact at a women's work camp. one, too. The restraint could adolescent sisters decided to play a trick on their family. They Sonderkommando — Jewish him from the blood red X There's a rumor spreading that be admirable, but it could Osuspended an apple on a string and began bouncing it on their be- prisoners forced to assist the messily painted on his back. there's a list being made of also be dangerous. Is the one droom floor. Their gullible parents, in the room below, became con- Nazis with the genocide. Things go in and out of focus Sonderkommando to extermi- creating a narrative of this vinced that the rapping they could hear came from a lost soul trying This isn't a movie that's inte- regularly — possibly as Saul nate, too. horror responsible for neatly to make contact with them, and Spiritualism was born. rested in the big picture, re- comprehends them. He helps But these are just the back- presenting a conclusion to Much later, the Fox sisters confessed the sorry truth of their naughti- demption or reflection, thou- usher the prisoners into the ground conditions to Saul's the audience? ness, but the damage was done. Within a couple of years, it seemed gh. Understanding is not in its gas chambers. We hear their story. Not making a statement is that everyone was desperate to encounter spirits on “the other side”: vocabulary. This is inhuman screams, but we see his face, Early on, Saul spots a boy perhaps the most provocati- the craze spread across the Atlantic like rampant ectoplasm and even- cinema of desperation. not theirs. He scrubs the bloo- dying on a slab surrounded ve thing Nemes could have tually covered most of the globe. It is disturbing. It is imme- dy floors clean when it's over. by Nazi doctors. After he done. "Son of Saul" doesn't At that time, if you wanted your séance to outdo your rival’s, you diate. It is haunting. And it's Everything is loud, harried breathes his final breath, they tell, it shows, and it places the needed a medium — ideally a young girl — through whom spirits something that few will ever and chaotic, but somehow order an autopsy. This dead gnawing burden on the rest would make rapping noises, move furniture, and even speak, though want to see more than once. methodical, too. The guards boy — who he believes to be of us. Hungarian filmmaker László scream "work!" ''work!" and his son — becomes Saul's ob- they seldom said anything of great profundity. From the very early days until the 1980s, one of the most popular spirits to be thus widely, Nemes has created what feels the Sonderkommando oblige, session as he commits himself "Son of Saul," a Sony Pictu- serially and sometimes simultaneously summoned was known as Ka- like a new cinematic language whether it's stripping off the to finding a Rabbi to say the res Classics release, is rated R tie King. This novel purports to be her autobiography. to tell this hyper-focused story prisoners' clothes, offering Kaddish and arrange a proper by the Motion Picture Associa- Lorna Gibb is already the author of two proper biographies, of Re- of a Sonderkommando, Saul false reassurances on the way burial. tion of America for "disturbing becca West and Hester Stanhope. This is her first venture into the (Géza Röhrig) across two days to their deaths, or shoveling Saul is a shell of a man, and violent content, and some gra- heady world of fiction, and at first she doesn’t get very far, so many at the Auschwitz-Birkenau their ashes into a lake. the self-assigned objective phic nudity." Running time: real and readily verifiable historical sources does she cite. Published death camp in October 1944. The Sonderkommando are gives him purpose outside of 107 minutes. documents, witness accounts and newspaper articles attest to Katie’s feats, and there are even spooky photographs of her on the internet. The story she has to tell, purportedly in her own words, is, however, a fabrication. Yet so glorious is it that we, ridiculously, find ourselves half-believing in her. She is a preposterous character, of course. Ambitious, illogical and tTUNES given to inexplicable surges and lapses of power, she swoops around the globe, enjoying every advance in technology as it arrives. She is rather pleased with one photograph in which, having crossed her arms to maximise her bosom, she has inadvertently given herself “the appearance of the newly risen dead”: “an excellent look for a ghost”, GRAMMY-NOMINATED COUNTRY she comments. Often indifferent to human suffering, she can be mil- dly malicious, but she is sometimes capable of empathy, and she even SINGER AM SHINES ON DEBUT falls in love and experiences the brief pleasure of a kiss. The end of C her story (if indeed it has ended) is genuinely moving. Hilary Mantel’s 2005 novel “Beyond Black” concerns a medium skilled at many a clever trick who is occasionally surprised when Southern California native who spent time shoveling manu- overtaken by happenings she hasn’t planned. This seems to be what re on her grandfather's horse ranch, Cam — born Camaron happened to some of the mediums who “channelled” our Katie — A AP PHOTO Ochs — blends earthy, from-the-heart sentiments and urban pop and to some of the inquiring people whose wavering scepticism is rhythms on her country music debut, "Untamed." scrupulously documented in “A Ghost’s Story”. But Mantel’s book is The delicate acoustic strings and intimate vocal delivery of "Bur- not the only publication that comes to mind. ning House," Cam's Grammy-nominated breakout hit, offer an In Don Marquis’s “Archy and Mehitabel” stories, first collected in emotionally piercing counterpoint to the party-all-the-time the- 1927, Archy is a cockroach, living in a newspaper office in the 1920s. mes dominating country radio. The 11 songs on "Untamed" — In a previous life he was a poet of free verse. Every night he jumps on all co-written by Cam — suggest she's pursuing personal revela- to the keys of a typewriter to write lyrically, tragically, nostalgically tion more than superficial singalongs. about happier days, and about his adventures with Mehitabel, the of- Producer Jeff Bhasker — who has worked with Kanye West, fice cat. To work a shift-key is too much effort for a cockroach and Bruno Mars, fun. and Taylor Swift — and co-producing protege the resulting lower-case poems sit there every morning, for the office Tyler Johnson occasionally press too hard to bring a rhythmic staff to find and to publish. thrust to the arrangements, obscuring the power of Cam's lyrics Towards the end of “A Ghost’s Story”, Katie, who was once so strong and delivery. The emotion in "Cold in California," ''Hungover as to be able to inhabit, albeit briefly, a human body, finds her powers on Heartache" and the title cut are buried beneath overbearing waning.