“Record everything that could be heard at Auschwitz” – Libération

2024-01-30 17:15:00

And the sound was seen. In the middle of the image, the rustling of a leatherette skirt against a frozen corpse, the muffled hubbub of a shopping center, the deep roar of a void hidden beneath the world. It was Under the Skin, the third incredible feature film by a British filmmaker particularly attentive to sound, Jonathan Glazer, and the discovery of an extraordinary sound designer, Johnnie Burn, who reinvented his profession before our eyes. The two had worked together, until then, for advertising; what Under the Skin did was reveal a filmmaker with a keen ear like those of Lynch or Weerasethakul, and a rigorous and inventive craftsman like an author, who finally put his profession at the center of attention. Moreover, we recognized his work even before reading his name in the credits of Nope, Jordan Peele, crazy about Under the Skin who came to poach the Englishman all the way to Brighton to add sound to his own alien, unique in every aspect, vital functioning. , and therefore own noise, voices, vibrations.

Yet never until Zone of Interest had a Burn soundtrack played such a central role in a film. Chronicle of the daily life of Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss and his family, while he was commander of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in the midst of the Final Solution, his plot takes place in the adjoining staff house without ever show nothing of what takes place in the “KL”. But what is happening is being heard: a staggering mission for Johnnie Burn and his team to recreate this symphony of death, the conception of which he tells us over the long term, from scientific research to the final turns of the screw in editing, in close collaboration with Glazer, editor Paul Watts and composer Mica Levi.

How did Jonathan Glazer present this film project and its specificity to you?

About five years after Under the Skin, he let me know he was working on a script. When I read it, I felt terrified. “Have you thought about putting some sound on it, Jonathan?” To which he replied, “the sound is going to be the most important thing.”

He had therefore already planned that the film would never show the interior of the camp…

The first version of the scenario had two scenes take place in the camp, notably one in which we adopted the point of view of a prisoner who looked up at the sky at night, to admire the Earth. But the idea was already very clear that the sound would take care of the essential, and that it would be juxtaposed with the avoidance of the protagonists.

How were the structure and interaction between image and sound decided?

From the outset, it was understood that there would be a need for a huge amount of sound that could be used in editing, a central step for Jonathan since this is where he finished writing the film. I told him to worry about the family drama while I tried to create twenty-four hours of soundtrack, which would record everything that could be heard at Auschwitz in 1943. I did a little over a year of research, which I recorded in a 600-page document [un compendium de documents divers, de la littérature au témoignage, que nous avons pu consulter, et qui rassemble les informations sur la production de son et de musique dans le camp, puis liste les phénomènes et sons à capturer et recréer, ndlr].

How to store all these sources?

I benefited from a comfortable budget. I was able to obtain vintage vehicles. With a team of three, we visited a gentleman in Estonia who owned a certain motorcycle with the original engine. We recorded shots fired with the appropriate weapons at 140 meters, the distance between Todesblock 11 [un édifice à Auschwitz qui servait de lieu de punition et de torture, ndlr] and the Höss garden. I drew a map to establish the arrangements and distances between the different nationalities in the camp, to understand how far, and how their voices carried. We traveled to several capitals across Europe, recording people passing by at night in different states of excitement or suffering, on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, during protests in Paris. We went to football matches in Germany to record young men shouting aggressively. Anything that, when put together, could accurately represent the sound of mass murder. When Jonathan started filming, the Polish crews asked him: “When are you going to film the horror?” He replied: “Johnnie will take care of the horror, with the sound.”

As with Under the Skin, you also imagined an original device to record sound on set.

Yes, a network of 20 microphones of different models hidden around the Höss house and their garden to capture the sound of people like surveillance. We hear the cups, the footsteps of adults and children. We put this whole part of the film together, edited it and mixed it. That’s when I said to Jonathan, “And now we can tackle the 10,000 sounds I’ve recorded over the last year.”

It is striking that Jonathan Glazer uses this expression, “horror” [«the bad stuff»]. You must be aware of the long critical debate surrounding the representation of the Holocaust in cinema. A pitfall which we can say that the film avoids, or on the contrary that it falls right into – because sound allows, in its own way, representation.

I’m aware of all that.

Did you hesitate?

Yes. I feel like we worked in a reasonable and respectful way, and that there is still a need to tell this story, since so many people refuse to believe it happened.

You say “reasonable” – and we understand that your sound work is largely based on scientific precepts. What about the work of imagination? Have you allowed yourself any liberties that have to do, like the writing of the characters, with fiction? We think of this industrial roar that is heard throughout the film.

The idea for the roar arose when post-production was already well underway. There is a scene in which the young actor who plays Hans is lying on his bed, and humming this motif that Jonathan whispered to him. Jonathan imagined this beat, like a rhythm. During editing, I suggested rhythmically editing the sound of a furnace in a fireplace, accompanied by sounds of wind. Jonathan suggested also using it as background noise for the scene where Rudolph smokes a cigar in the garden, before going to bed. The logic was to place the roar throughout the film, which is what we ended up doing. Three months before the end of the edit, we organized a screening with the team, without this whirring track, and Chris Oddy, the production designer, brought back a criticism: “The camp sound was much louder and industrial .” I told him that we had probably erred on the side of caution. But he was right. The sound of voices, of death, was missing.

The first event of the film, which occurs in the garden, is both visual and audible: a gunshot, to which no one reacts. Was it included in the script?

None of the sounds were scripted. There was only a very vague allusion, like “we will hear the sound of the camp throughout the film”. Jonathan and I spent months placing each sound in the edit, making sure that the actors didn’t seem to be reacting to any of them, and that each use was justified and respectful. But if we have to talk realistically, the number of deaths per execution during this period exceeded on average 90 murders per day. Outside the gas chambers.

How did you become a film sound engineer?

When I was 20, I did an internship in a studio in London specializing in advertising. I spent ten years there before founding my company. Jonathan was my first client, we worked on several spots together. Then he took me with him into the world of cinema. We started working on Under the Skin and I loved thinking about this movie every day, until midnight, texting Jonathan with ideas while I was already in bed. The idea of ​​telling a story with sound, on a larger canvas, completely excited me.

Do you remember a film that had a particular impact on you as a young viewer due to its sound?

A death row inmate has escaped. Bresson understands sound so well, how sound does half the sensory work of a film. I was struck by Apocalypse Now, too. George Lucas. Even David Fincher. The sound of The Killer is extraordinary.

Why is sound so undervalued and undertreated by filmmakers and producers?

Because it costs, compared to images, very little to produce. Because many filmmakers come from writing, and imagine that their film depends on the actors who say the dialogues. These are the same people, generally, who forget that body language often says as much as words. I was very lucky in meeting Jonathan, then Jordan Peel, who amazed me with his understanding of sound, the particularities of which he indicates on each page of his scripts.

David Fincher is also very strong in his way of blending sound design and music. A point in common with the way Jonathan Glazer mixes your sound design and the music of Mica Levi.

I live in Brighton, and Jonathan in London. But I built an exact replica of my studio in his workshop, which allows us to work remotely. We spent a year and a half working via Zoom, several hours a day. Mica had set up her studio in the next room, and Paul Watts, the editor, in another. An ideal setup for everyone to propose their ideas and exchange them as they go. Mica popping up – “Hey Johnnie, I have an idea, I’ll send you a file” – me receiving the music and experimenting with how it would fit into this or that sound… Mica composed a whole score, which has largely been pushed aside to make way for the sound of camp. But we never stopped comparing and weaving our ideas together. [Il s’épanche sur une scène particulière, et l’idée collective d’un fondu au rouge, ndlr]. Each time I work with another filmmaker, I realize how original the method implemented by Jonathan is. Everything fits together perfectly.

Is the method different when you work, for example, with Yórgos Lánthimos, with whom you have collaborated four times?

Jonathan wants to work with me every day for a year, if possible twelve hours a day. The first time we worked with Yórgos, he told me: “Play me the soundtrack when you’re satisfied.” To which I replied, “I’ll be satisfied when I’m done.” He said, “All right, play me the soundtrack when it’s finished.” Which literally ended up happening, for the Killing of the Sacred Deer. Because The Favorite was suddenly greenlit by production, and Yórgos had to leave to start pre-production, or filming – I don’t remember exactly – in a hurry. “You’re going to have to finish without me.” I told myself that we had already done The Lobster, that maybe he was right to trust me. He heard the final result on the day of the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. I was sitting six rows behind him, sweating. I met him at the bar. “So, what did you think?” He replied: “Not bad.”