Stellan Skarsgard's 18-Minute Holocaust Film Playing At Manhattan's Film Forum

Directed by Benjamin Ross (RKO 281), this film is only 18-minutes long, perhaps because the very idea of its subject -- sonderkommandos -- is too mind-blowing for a feature film to accommodate. The sonderkommandos, of course, were Jewish slaves who were kept alive in the concentration camps to perform such ungodly tasks as to convince the new arrivals that nothing bad was afoot and to assist in processing them through the 'showers' and then disposing of the remains afterwards. Torte Bluma, which is showing as an add-on short with the print of Two Or Three Things I Know About Him at Manhattan's Film Forum, stars Stellan Skarsgard as Franz Stangl, an SS officer at Treblinka who repeats the phrase "I walk this world but once" to himself repeatedly throughout the piece, quietly pondering his own moral fiber as he debates over issues like whether to grant his own sonderkommando, Blau (Simon McBurney) the privilege of walking his father to an immediate death after he arrives in the camp. This deep thought process is interrupted only when Stangl gets a hankering for Torte Bluma, an expensive jam.

Early in the piece, we see Blau serving Stangl a piece of cake that turns out to be riddled with bugs. Stangl knocks it away and screams, but stays his hand instead of pulling out his riding crop and giving Blau the beating of his life. That's Stangl's conscience kicking in, you see. He will do Blau the service of forgiving his mistake and not deliver the beating that he clearly deserves -- he will be the bigger man. This short film is, on some level, an attempt to grasp the idea of a completely misguided or worthless moral struggle -- a struggle that begins on such a misguided plateau that it can't possibly result in anything but farce. In that respect, it's reminiscent of another Holocaust piece, 2001's Conspiracy, with Kenneth Branagh as Reinhard Heydrich. That film closes with Holocaust architect Heydrich relating a story to his brethren Nazis meant to impart the lunatic lesson that they should take care not to lose their humanity, in the midst of their necessary business of carrying out the Holocaust.

"Unhappiness breeds inefficiency," Stangl tells another SS officer at one point in Torte Bluma, when that officer questions Stangl's excessive kindness to Blau. The look in Stangl's eye when he says this is almost like a wink at the audience, as if he sees himself as some kind of Schindler-figure who is hustling his fellow Nazis in other to sneak in a good deed. "This pretense of affection," the other officer persists, "what good can it serve?" Stangl replies with his catch-phrase, "I walk this world but once." Stangl is a man who accepts his surroundings completely and has no higher plane with which to contrast them against. He undoubtedly sees himself exactly as he's presented -- a man who could teach these other officers a thing or two about the value of kindness, tolerance, and turning the other cheek. Skarsgard gives Stangl an appropriately stiff back -- he walks throughout the camp like the master of all he surveys, not in the manner of a bully looking for someone to pick on, but as a man actually keen to engage positively with the world.

The end of the film contains a facade -- a physical one, to match the moral one. Thanks to Stangl's impressive kindness, Blau is granted the privilege of taking his father out of the line, giving him a last meal, and then walking him to the "hospital." During the meal, he answers his father's questions with lies and encourages him to finish his meal, before he will be unknowingly walked to a quick and easy death. It's an incredible scene to watch, with better acting than can be found in many feature-length films these days. The "hospital" is a one-dimensional wooden frame designed to look like a hospital from a distance, complete with a Red Cross symbol. It's like a house on a movie set, with nothing behind the door except a few support beams pushed into the mud to hold it up. What's behind the door you can guess for yourself. The film ends where it began, with Stangl unwinding after a long day of work and rewarding himself, with a helping of his favorite jam -- Torte Bluma.