Genre: Drama, Thriller, War
Directed by: László Nemes
‘Son of Saul’ Review: From Holocaust Hell, Piercing Art A Jewish worker in a Nazi death camp encounters the corpse of a boy he takes for his son.
Starring: Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn
There is a moment in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah when he interviews a barber, Abraham Bomba. The man cuts the hair of men in his shop and, as he does, Lanzmann is asking about his experience in the concentration camps. Initially, he is factual, recounting the events one step at a time. But, as he continues, he explains how his duty was to prepare women for the gas chambers. He’d cut their hair, knowing they’d die. The guilt is overwhelming and the man breaks down. It is an extraordinary moment in the 9-hour documentary and reveals how vital Lanzmann’s documentation of these experiences, so soon after the events, is. Bomba, in Treblinka, was part of the Sonderkommando – a group of Jewish prisoners forced to assist in the gas chambers. If they refused, they would be killed.
Son of Saul could be about that barber; a broken man desperate to find a single moment of forgiveness for sins he’s been forced to commit. The film begins with a description of Sonderkommando before we are walked to the claustrophobic space of a chamber. We are then pushed intimately close to Saul (Géza Röhrig). Often refusing to cut away, we are on his shoulder and see the beads of sweat on his neck and the dirt on his ears. In the background, blurred, are the horrific events of Auschwitz. The busy groups assisted to remove their clothes, as Saul silently places jackets on pegs and directs the crowd into the next room. The enormous door is pulled shut and the noise grows. We don’t need words, description or clarity to know what’s going on. The cacophony of banging, shouting and screams get louder and the Sonderkommando all wait outside, in muted horror. Cut to the removal of the corpses. There’s a sense that the out-of-focus bodies represents how, to even cope, Saul has to block out what is happening. But, among the bodies, one young boy survives. Despite this miraculous moment, an SS Guard murders him anyway as Saul looks on. This child needs to be buried and Saul decides to do everything in his power to find a Rabbi and bury the boy respectfully.While the thrust of the story is finding a rabbi for this child, we are witness to threads of other events that are crucial to our understanding of the Holocaust. The Sonderkommando are plotting to rise up against the guards. They speak in hushed voices and short, brief conversations. They’re aware that, in time, they will be placed on a list to be killed and replaced. The combination of these two stories, weaving together seamlessly, means that the scope of Son of Saul is vast while simultaneously recounting an intimate story. In one significant sequence as Saul looks for a Rabbi, he is pulled up to an SS Guard. We are filled with fear as it is clear his life hangs in the balance. The Guard asks what language he speaks, and replying that he’s Hungarian, the guard responds, “Hungarian is such an elegant language”. It is a passing moment but, rather than see it as a reason for Saul to live, we’re reminded of the countless others who didn’t.
While the guards bark orders, Saul is often silent. The parallel between Saul and the boy is what raises this film to the level of masterpiece. Saul, like the child, was sent to the camp to die. In both cases, while Saul was selected to be Sonderkommando and survive, the son was selected to survive the gas chamber. This is the significance of his burial and why Saul is connected to the child. The two are linked by their desperate need for survival. We are aware he has nothing to feel guilty for but it is clear that this act of burial is atonement for, what he believes, are his sins. Shocking, traumatic and deeply powerful, Son of Saul is a triumph of filmmaking, storytelling and historical record, and you cannot afford to miss it.
- Be advised that this review addresses the entire narrative of Son of Saul, including revelations as well as the ending of the film. Set amid the Zyklon-B-dispensing showers and corpse-disposal.
- Son of Saul review: an outstanding, excoriating look at evil in Auschwitz. This astonishing debut film, about a prisoner in the concentration camp employed in the industrial processes of body.
- Trailer for 'Son of Saul.' With any film, or novel, or theatrical treatment depicting any aspect of the Holocaust, the dividing lines are inevitable and fierce.
- SON OF SAUL is a deeply heartbreaking story from Hungary about a Jewish man’s personal experience during the Holocaust, where he’s forced to assist Hitler’s National Socialist thugs in the machinery of large-scale extermination and witnesses the death of a boy he believes to be his son.
★★★★★
Nemes stays close, showing us only what Saul sees, photographing him from the back or the side, Dardennes-style, as he walks purposefully toward each destination. The horror remains in the periphery, a blur, but it’s unmistakable: the pounding and screaming from behind the metal doors, the naked and lifeless limbs being dragged across the concrete floor once the doors have reopened. The suggestion of the suffering is more unsettling than wallowing in it. Saul reacts to nothing. His face remains stoic, unflinching.
Son Of Saul Movie Summary
Right away, we know we’re in the hands of a director who wants to tell the story of the Holocaust from a different perspective than we’ve seen before in films: a more personal, intimate one. “Son of Saul” is a movie that requires attention and patience, with a script from Nemes and Clara Royer that’s often wordless or whispered. If you’re not a fan of ambiguity, either from a narrative or moral perspective, you may have trouble here. But this is just a marvel of controlled filmmaking—a bold vision carried out with powerful simplicity, and an impressively assured debut form both Nemes and Röhrig as his star.
Son Of Saul Review New Yorker
Röhrig has the tricky task of carrying this story on his shoulders—and us along with him—without the benefit of being able to emote or even say much. It’s a physical performance as much as it is a quietly emotional one; he has to establish who this man is mainly through his gestures, demeanor and energy. Saul is savvy and resourceful, traits he must use again and again to survive over the course of a harrowing couple of days. Then again, time is hazy here, as are many elements of “Son of Saul.” Identities are unclear at times, even of characters who play pivotal roles. Maybe that’s intentional, though—an effort by Nemes to suggest the psychological chaos that can exist in such a cruelly systematic environment.
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