Juraj Herz's THE CREMATOR (1969)

"We're living in Europe, in the 20th century."

And: "You're strong and brave; a pure germanic soul." (Spoken to Karel to pump him up just after a man also speaks on there being a New World Order to comr and just begore he speaks on the poor, wretched Jews.... eep)

"The flames can't hurt you now, my dear." - (Karel to his wife, late in the film)

Timely! It really fucking sucks that it is!

And is it any wonder Karel went full Nazi? The man couldn't stop talking and ponitificating - you've seen the aspiring and full-on Nazis that just won't shut their sanctimonious pie-holes - and with him monologuing about everything under the sun including life, the beauty of death, mostly the beauty of being cremated (isn't the most beautiful, the most tremendous thing, and of course read that in his voice), about the wonder of cremating your cats and other animals, about how it frees people and how it releases them from their fear of death. I'm sure I'm missing other topics he covered and talked about, but when a man like this goes on and on, you're bound to lose track of what sounds intriguing and what is cod-swallop.

You should not listen so closely to these kinds of people, as they go on and on about this or that thing (sometimes there may even be a point that has a shred of validity or interest, but very rarely), and yet you should take them seriously as far as what they are capable of and how far they will readily be sucked into the world of Fascism. Herz was in a concentration camp with his family as a child (many in his distant family were wiped out, somehow he and his closest survived), and it's one thing to then as an adult make a film about Nazi ideology and how a person has little objection to becoming a Nazi (the warning signs were there in his own sense of superiority as a man who, again, cremates people for a living, as being like some kind of annointed figure). What puts The Cremator into a special category is its execution (no pun certainly intended).

Every shot and every edit is meant for disorientation and to increase the horror, like increasing the drip on an IV, where you are aware from the first images at that zoo with all of those animals that Herz and his team of camera operators and cutters mean to get the audience into a constant state of unrest and unease. And that is as it should be since these are uneasy people to be around. There are so many tight close ups, disgusting and wretched shots of mouths chewing food and of the naked bodies that Karel looks at throughout the story, and of the bones of the food the family eats and all manner of objects and faces. And later in the film, notice how the more Karel is in his Nazi mode the more the camera becomes a kind of stalking force (that shot where his wife is almost backing up as he talks at her room to room, brilliant but yikes).

There is above all the sense of the subjective and perspective that has an edge of documentary realism to it - like when Karel is watching the Jews at their own dinner and all those images of faith and their own dining - until it comes back to the horror inside of it all, of how much poison and vitriol and hate Karel is taking in and subsuming into (and of course his family is half Jewish, so... uh oh).  My interpretation is: Herz wants us already on edge early on when we are seeing Karel's world through his eyes before talk of Czech vs German blood comes around (by then it is just... this is the nightmare Aryan funhouse "The Fuhrer will create a paradise" we are placed in).

The musical score is also uncanny and gets under your skin (and I mean like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs); there's always something ominous and unsettling about how Karel will be talking about something that should be simple or even innocuous, like the directions on how to follow the time chart of the crematorium, and you feel like there's a curse about the entire place and the person talking and maybe this is an underrated circle of hell.

And I think Herz knew that Rudolf Hrsuinsky had one of the most eerily soothing voices in cinema (if he were around today, he'd have to do ASMR for a YouTube video promotion or something), and his performance in general is remarkable because of how low-key he is.  He never gets that animated, his demeanor is rather calm and sedate, so that there's this confidence if not outright authority he says.  His reactions to decadence are minor, but that's what makes them stand out, his reactions to the man getting the sexual acts performed at that dinner table while the other man talks about wiping out anyone Jewish, and then how quickly the Director at the table turns Karel into a willing collaborators, is... memorable because of how subtly Hrsuinksy plays it all.  

This was marked as a "Dark comedy" in the Criterion Collection, and perhaps a couple of scenes are Darkly or uncomfortably humorous in their way (again, watching a sex act just suddenly happen at a big dinner with dozens of people around is something else).  But this is a film that destabilizes the audience, and I don't know if Herz could have made such an impact if he didn't go about the filming and cutting in such a radical manner.  This is about a world where people are destabilized by words and ideas that tear humanity apart.  It's about what it means to look at "them" and turn into a monster; the film becomes increasingly surreal and even demented in scope in its final reels.  

Or maybe this isn't that funny right now, this day and week and year of April 17th 2025 in America.  Who's the Cremator of today?