A lot of things in The House cannot be explained with certainty, and to this, the foregrounding of the body element contributes. The diseased human body, then, adds to the film’s photographic realism as well as to its undoing. Like in ancient ruins, the flesh in its very materiality is a register of temporality. Through time the elements leave their marks on our bodies, and so does the process of aging. Scars leave their sign on the skin, and passage of time deepens the lines. But in The House Is Black, the life of the lepers has altered these processes. The age of many of the subjects filmed cannot be easily determined. Although there is an awareness of temporality that comes with the effects of decay, the historical trajectory that the decay has taken remains unclear.