hick clouds of cold, obsidian dread permeate The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Sky’s six-part reworking of the multi-million bestseller by Heather Morris: they loom disquietingly in the first frames and grow steadily more noxious through five-and-a-bit brutal hours, inching across the screen with the malign determination of black mould. As ‘Lali’ Sokolov—the real Holocaust survivor upon whom Morris’ novel is based—trudges toward the cattle car that’ll snatch him off to unspeakable miseries, the frenzied urge to thrust oneself into the moment and drag him out of harm’s way is blindsiding. “I’ve heard rumours,” he whispered to his little sister a couple of days beforehand. We, too, have an inkling of what’s to come, and it’s every bit as vile as you’d expect, though none of us—not even the makers of this series—could ever truly grasp the colossal wickedness of that era.
The promise of a “love story” from present-day Lali (Harvey Keitel) to Ms. Morris (Melanie Lynskey) during their first meetup—the fledgling Kiwi author interviewed Sokolov umpteen times over a three-year period in the 2000s—may seem peculiar, particularly while the next forty minutes are busy dispensing a smorgasbord of atrocities. And yet a love story it does indeed become, as young Lali (Jonah Hauer-King, quietly effective) crosses paths with graceful Gita (Anna Próchniak, enchanting) within the confines of the notorious death camp; a sadistic netherworld built of mud, barbed wire, and appropriately pallid cinematography. Had it not been gauged with such delicate sleight of hand, the gimmick of having Lali (eighty-odd and infirm) recount his tale in the here and now could’ve kiboshed the impetus of the whole piece: instead, it functions both as respite from the tortures of the camp and a piercing rumination on the fickleness of memory; Lali’s words, delivered more often than not with dazed ambivalence, are the only ones we have—and, as scenes of him hallucinating the bogeymen of his past so tartly establish, the bedevilled grip of PTSD can play merciless tricks on the mind.
Punctuated by the ethereal resonance of Hans Zimmer, the requisite shortcomings for this patented brand of Hollywoodised history are present and correct—Lali being plummy-accented as a twentysomething, for instance, yet sporting an explicit Slovak drawl sixty years on—but they seldom subdue the show’s integrity or its psychological sting. As Lynskey (letting her ocean-deep eyes do all the work) and Keitel (hypnotic in his haunted anguish) carve their solemn rapport, the pair of them enmeshed in swathes of grief, guilt, romance, and revulsion, it becomes clear to us that Lali’s story, as evil—and unreliable—as sections of it are, is one that needed to be told. Whether you’ve the stomach for it is up to you. Personally, I’m glad I braved it out.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz is currently streaming on Sky Atlantic (U.K.), Peacock (U.S.), Stan (Australia), and Neon (New Zealand).
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