Theatrical adaptation: What you need to take care of

“The Investigation” by Peter Weiss follows the path of the victims from the ramp in Auschwitz to the fiery furnace in an eleven-part trial. What focus did you set when you decided to film his documentary theater?

Above all, it was important to us to film the theater text in a modern form and in a version that was appropriate for the cinema. Peter Weiss’ play was a perfect basis for the script. We have not intervened in the text itself. However, we have increased the number of actors portraying the witnesses to 39. And as a reminder that many victims were of non-German origin, several come from Ukraine, France, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Russia, the Netherlands and other countries. They all speak German because a translation would be annoying.

The backdrop is extremely reduced and is only changed by colored light and the number of witness podiums. Your dramaturgical recipe for not distracting from the texts?

I have worked with different talents from different spheres. The set designer Nina Peller comes from the theater, the make-up designer Kerstin Riek from classic films, Tina Kloempken does costume design at the opera and our cameraman, Guido Frenzel, has major TV shows in his CV. We worked with eight cameras in Adlershof, where large television events are usually shot, and worked with studio lighting. It was important to us that the editors – Anne Fabini, Christoph Strothjohan and Peter R. Adam, who died in 2023 – make classic cinema. You can feel all these influences.

Interview

dpa/Sven Hoppe/

RP Kahl (Rolf Peter Kahl) was trained at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rostock and worked at various theaters in the 90s. He appeared in numerous film and television productions. In 1995 he founded “Erdbeermundfilm” and has been producing feature films, short films, music videos and video art ever since. Since 1999 he has dedicated himself to performances and video art, which have been presented in museums, galleries and theaters. In 2018 Kahl became a professor of film and acting. Now he has the play “The Investigation. Oratorio in 11 Cantos” by Peter Weiss filmed.

After Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” you have found your own unique approach to telling about Auschwitz.

With »The Zone of Interest« Jonathan Glazer has succeeded in finding a contemporary approach that does not aim to fictionalize and emotionalize the indescribable or to repeat images that we already know. He tries to discover new truths through a different narrative. In political film it can be an opportunity to explore and describe difficult issues in order to gain new knowledge, insights and a new liveliness. You can feel that in “The Investigation”. All those who don’t like going to the theater and are not sure whether they can sit through the topic for four hours should definitely see the film. Afterwards you will say: “It was like in a movie! That was emotional, that was exciting and I understood something that I didn’t understand at all in textbooks or documentaries.«

The characters describe the torture and killing methods in detail. Tom Wlaschiha, for example, reports as witness 38 about the sequence in the gas chambers.

This is an incredibly powerful moment. In a dialogue lasting more than ten minutes – which works like a monologue – he tells very matter-of-factly what happened and uses the text to create a persona, a new form of playing style, which then has a very special energy and power and which is not so easy is repeatable.

The rehearsal and production process for “The Investigation” took five weeks, and you shot it over five days. How were you able to work satisfactorily with the actors in such a short time?

There are very emotional moments, but I want to leave it to the audience to decide when and how strong the moment is. That’s why it was important to me for all the actors to take a step back and not explain the emotionality of the character, but rather just speak the text. I’ve always said: “If this gives you an emotion as a human being, as a person, then allow it.” That’s enough.

Why did you decide to use music for this painful, murderous subject?

It was also a trial and error with the music. The concept paper said that there was no music at all. Not even during the end credits. Then my favorite composer Matti Gajek offered me something that we used very sparingly, sketchily in transitions and in selected places. This also helps you to breathe a little and let your thoughts flow. Only the final music, in which Portishead’s Beth Gibbons plays Henryk Górecki’s “Symphony No. 3« in Polish is very clearly stated: I think it’s totally okay if someone says that it’s too big for me. But I also find it very respectable when the audience endures such a hard work for four hours.

In addition to the four-hour version, there is a three-hour version. The cinema can decide for itself which version is shown. What is the difference between the shorter and longer versions?

In the shorter one we reduce it to eight cantos. Of course you miss something in terms of content, but you can still follow the story well. For example, we do not tell about the fate of a young woman whose personal letter to a prisoner was found. When the film comes to television and in the media library, there will also be a serial, eleven-part version – as is currently being planned. This makes the topic accessible to a wider audience and especially to younger people.

The film is also suitable as school material.

Yes! Unterscharführer Stark, who appears in the sixth song, played by Nico Ehrenteit, is just a little older than the high school graduates. He talks about his surroundings and explains the system behind all the actions. Stark was capable of these acts without being born a fundamentally evil guy. You can compare your actions with your own morals and think about your own responsibility. I don’t mean this in a didactic way. My point is simply that every single person should not see democracy, liberalism and the rule of law as a given, but as something that they themselves have to take care of as a member of this society.

Axel Sichrovsky, witness 32, is himself a descendant of the Shoah survivors. He describes the defendants as “a horde of executioners who grin, salivate, get bored or seem to react indifferently to their own statements.” Other members of the ensemble also come from families that lost relatives in the Holocaust or were lucky enough to be able to emigrate. Was this discussed on set?

We didn’t talk about it on set. I didn’t choose the actors primarily based on their family background. I even didn’t know about some of them. Axel Sichrovsky, for example, had never verbalized before or during filming why working on “The Investigation” was so important to him. I found out about this afterwards and understood why the story told was particularly close to him.

I also didn’t want the story to end in the past. Finally, we leave the artificially staged courtroom and show a few pictures from the Auschwitz memorial. You see groups of youth walking around there, which is supposed to give the whole thing a kind of hope for the future. And I was very moved when I saw a class from Germany with students from different nationalities lighting candles there.

“The Investigation”: Germany 2024. Director: RP Kahl. With: Rainer Bock, Clemens Schick, Bernhard Schütz, Arno Frisch, Thomas Dehler, Sabine Timoteo, Christiane Paul, Barbara Philipp, Tom Wlaschiha, and many more. m. 240 min./186 min. Cinema release: July 25th.