One of the most highly regarded films of 2015 (capped recently by an Academy Award nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category) is the Hungarian production SON OF SAUL from first-time director and co-writer László Nemes (who penned the film with Clara Royer). Set in the Auschwitz crematoriums, circa 1944, the story follows Hungarian Jewish prisoner Saul Ausländer (newcomer Géza Röhrig), who is a member of the Sonderkommando—prisoners selected by the Nazis running the camp to deal with the most horrid aspects of the facilities, including herding new arrivals into rooms to disrobe, moving them to gas chambers, and removing their dead bodies from the chambers to the crematorium.
The winner of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix and recent winner of Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes, SON OF SAUL is a grim and brutal film, but it’s also a moving story of defiance and finding a way to die with dignity. The Sonderkommando team members are only allowed to keep their positions for a few months, but they’re never sure exactly how much time they have, so they live with the threat of death hanging over their heads every minute. While doing his job, Saul comes across a young boy who is not quite dead after being gassed, and he believes the young man is the son he was separated from when he arrived at the camp. In reality, this doesn’t seem likely, but Saul is convinced this is his boy and sets about stashing the body so that he may give him a proper burial, complete with a recitation of the mourner’s Kaddish by a rabbi, whom Saul seeks out in the camp population.
During the course of the two days in which the film takes place, Saul calls in many favors, makes many deals, and is lied to as often as he is told the truth in his search for a rabbi, all the while he’s hiding this slight body in various corners of the confined quarters where the Jews were housed. SON OF SAUL is a cry of desperation, and the immediacy in which director Nemes stages this tale is almost too much to comprehend, let along watch play out in a series of long, unbroken shots, focusing primarily on Röhrig’s face, while atrocities occur in the background, usually out of focus but quite visible.
Working with relatively new (to features, at least) and masterful cinematographer Mátyás Erdély (MISS BALA, JAMES WHITE, THE QUIET ONES) and shooting on 35mm, Nemes has pieced together perhaps the most immersive, intimate non-documentary about the Holocaust I’ve ever seen. The film doesn’t show us these terrible events; it drops the viewer directly on the assembly line of this death factory, and I’m guessing this immediacy will simply be too much for many. Adding to the chaos of Saul’s experience, some of the prisoners are planning a rebellion and escape, which, to Saul, seems secondary to his quest. To add to the authenticity of the experience, the soundscape of the film is almost overwhelming with noises, screams and what seems like a multitude of different languages, primarily Yiddish, which is quite moving to hear spoken by so many again.
SON OF SAUL is the embodiment of one man’s guilt for performing tasks that he knows are unforgivable; perhaps more than that, Saul is racked with guilt over not protecting his child when they first arrived. His thinking is that if he can’t save his own soul, perhaps he can send this boy’s soul to heaven in a way faithful to his faith. Despite the grim setting, this man’s struggle provides the slightest ray of hope for a type of kindness. The entire film rests on the face of Géza Röhrig, and I promise you, you’ll remember his performance here for far longer than any of the Oscar-nominated male performances of 2015. The film is ferociously determined to burn into your brain and never leave, and I don’t think there’s any chance that won’t happen, especially with the substantial gut-punch of an ending.
