Son of Saul (2015)

I've just watched the most incredibly powerful and moving film."Saul Fia" ( Son of Saul) is a Hungarian film from 2015 that portrays two days in the life of Saul Auslander, an Hungarian prisoner working as a member of the Sonderkommando at one of the Auschwitz Crematoriums who tries to salvage the body of a boy he takes for his son, and find a rabbi to bury it.The cinematography is wonderful and unique in its use of a very shallow depth of field; the sound design amazing and the story, inevitably, heartbreaking.

Son of Saul blew me away in so many respects. This is quite an unusual film in so many ways, from the direction to the unique and successful way it delivers emotions. It tells a simple story, but anyone will realize how powerful it is by simply reading the synopsis.The one thing that first struck me about this film is Géza Röhrig 's performance as Saul. Given that this story unfolds in Auschwitz and all the horrors that are being depicted, emotions are delivered in quite a subtle manner, on one hand picturing the main character as a man carrying heavy emotional baggage, and on the other showing some surprising inner strength, fostered by his newfound quest of morally surviving by burying the body of a dead boy. László Nemes' direction is quite unique, as it consists of pretty close shots of the protagonist with everything surrounding him out of focus, leaving some of the horrors to the imagination at times, and creating a tense, hellish atmosphere in other scenes - always maintaining this emotional intimacy between the audience and Saul. Had Röhrig not been as stellar as he was, this could have been quite heavy - and borderline unwatchable. Honestly, this was quite a gamble - but the audacity paid off.You will not hear any music throughout the entire film. Again, I felt like it added to the subtlety in the delivery of emotions, as it never dictates how the viewer should feel - leaving Saul as the only true vehicle of emotion. Instead, with everything but the protagonist out of focus, the sound (which is very well executed) complements the blurry background and brings it to life in all its chaos, tension and horror. You don't always clearly see what is happening around Saul, but you certainly hear and feel it with him.The ending alone makes it worth watching the entire film. It is brilliant and it brought me to tears - not because it's sad, but because I was brought there emotionally through this entire experience, which culminates with a truly moving and beautiful moment. Very highly recommended.

It made me think of "Schindler's List"(1993) but this "Son of Saul"(2015) is different. It's as good as Spielberg's film, maybe even better. Love for your own child, even dead, makes you do unusual things, to defy death that awaits for you anyway, inside or off the concentration camp. A film excellently played, filmed, directed.

The debut feature film from Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes, SON OF SAUL wins Oscar's BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE PICTURE in 2016, it is a hard-nosed Holocaust drama takes a unique focal point of one particular Sonderkommando (Nazi's death camp inmates who are chosen to dispense with gas chamber victims), the Jewish-Hungarian Saul Ausländer (Röhrig, sometimes feels stilted but overall quite an endeavor from a non-professional).From the word go, Nemes' discreet modality of entirely putting Saul at the center stage grandly comes home to the audience, starting from an out of focus shot slowly clings to its object Saul, our visual cynosure, then meticulously follows his steps (a back-of-his-head vantage point) and only shows us what is happening strictly from his prospect, it is an intriguing and contained ploy, on one hand, the film waives a holistic view of the happenings, for fear that the uncompromising atrocity it scrupulously re-enacts is too much for viewers to bear, thus mercifully we are only presented with glimpses through Saul's constant movement, who seems to be strung-out yet benumbed, most of the time, he keeps to himself; on the other hand, the skimpy scenes are no less soul-stirring, the gas chamber, piles of naked cadavers, incinerators, dumping truckloads of ashes, the rampant slaughter, the whole package is there (a sterling job for its production designer, the Hungarian architect László Rajk Jr.), selectively materializes predicated upon Saul's presence, one indubitable merit of Nemes' picture is it has miraculously re-created a reliving the horror experience that possibly errs on the side of being so vicarious that one is instinctively repelled and tries to turn away from it. That is an inextricable dilemma of any film, cinema aims to engross, however, when the subject it depicts is inherently repugnant and horrendous to a fault, as a result we are often mired between these two disparate states, a self-inflicted masochism. Is there any redeeming grace to temper the milieu's inhuman brutality and its overlaying smothering? Yes, there must be, it is Saul's spur-of-the-moment decision to carry out a proper Jewish burial for a boy who dies after barely surviving the gas chamber and whom he claims to fellow inmates is his son (is it true? the answer is deliberately moot, but one inclines to nay, which makes Saul's action more perverse and improbable, maybe he thinks the boy's ephemeral survival is a numinous call for his action), so the imperative mission for him is to find a rabbi to officiate the burial, meantime, chivvied by Abraham (Molnár), another Sonderkommand, he is also embroiled into an impending uprising as their last attempt to scupper their imminent doomsday, but Saul is halfhearted. Granted that Saul's intransigency gravely compromises his contribution to the nobler/righteous cause (to an extent that he will lose those precious smuggled gun powders, and volunteer his own demise just to find a rabbi during the infernal pandemonium), the film perilously threats to negate its own raison d'être, which is to retain an infinitesimal trace of faith and courage to survive under such egregious monstrosities in the manifestation of defiance, Jews are being decimated, but their culture and rituals are deathless. In the end of the day, Saul's effort is futile, the rabbi he rescues is a sham, the body fails to be pushing up the daisies and when the camera finally veers from Saul after his hard-earned smile, what manifests is not a glint of hope but a consolation or a surrender only too soon will be rendered insignificant, ambiguity again takes an upper hand in this harrowing exploitation of the Holocaust, for all its calculated aesthetics, its impact is confounding and its laurels are undue.