The camp takes on the dimensions of breathless war zone, enhanced by a camera technique reminiscent of “Children of Men” for the way it draws us into the constant motion of the disturbing events, but more grounded in the experiences of single wide-eyed individual. Nemes maintains an immersive narrative in which dialogue comes and goes in terse, whispered exchanges as the prisoners attempt to develop their strategy with the prospects of sudden death always just a few feet away. In the meantime, Saul finds himself enmeshed in the stirrings of an escape plan, which in his diminished state he mostly regards with ambivalence. But in the camp, the distinction between the living and the dead is murky at best. “You failed the living for the dead,” one man tells him after he battles through a mass slaughter in the midst of his mission. Though he finds a flash of sympathy from a doctor only a few degrees removed from Saul’s own servitude, he mainly suffers through a solitary experience made even worse when various prisoners express disdain at his self-interested goal. Saul’s unsettling plight finds him scurrying about the camp in desperate search for a rabbi to perform Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, so that he can bury the child in peace. Nabbing the corpse and attempting to prevent the medical ward from performing an autopsy, Saul’s abrupt behavior makes it increasingly clear that he thinks the boy is in fact the son he hasn’t seen in years - though just how long, like most details involving Saul’s past, remains unclear. Mopping up the mess, his fellow inmates discover a child still breathing after the gas has been extinguished, until camp doctor comes by and promptly smothers the victim. The camera lingers on Saul’s face as he’s forced to stand guard and listen to the violent thuds and cries of dying victims just on the other side of the wall, while his stony expression suggests he’s been through the harrowing procedure countless times before.īut this time the outcome is even worse. Nemes confronts the sheer horror of that endeavor head-on: Whereas “Schindler’s List” faced plenty of criticism for its sugarcoated scene in which prisoners are shepherded into a gas chamber only to be met with a shower, “Son of Saul” offers no such respite.
Before the movie begins, Saul has been assigned to the Sonderkommando, a work camp for prisoners responsible for cleaning up after various executions. He couldn’t have found a drearier situation to explore. Erdely’s previous credits include the jittery thriller “Miss Bala,” which involved Mexican crime lords, and “Son of Saul” is similarly noteworthy for its capacity to root the material in a constant agitated state.
He’s aided in that feat by cinematographer Matyas Erdely’s crisp 35mm cinematography, which contains the action in the boxed-in 4:3 Academy ratio, leading to the perception of being trapped in a hellacious underworld while never once straining credibility. Nemes’ ability to inject the material of a concentration camp survival story - which, sadly, now carries the baggage of countless sentimental clichés - with bracing cinematic energy is all the more impressive because it’s the writer-director’s first feature. A remarkable refashioning of the Holocaust drama that reignites the setting with extraordinary immediacy, “Son of Saul” is both terrifying to watch and too gripping to look away. The camera mostly stays right there, inches from Saul’s face, for the duration of this tense two hour experience. In the opening minutes, the physical chaos and shouts of desperation from Auschwitz-Birkenau surround Saul in soft focus, hinting at a terrifying bigger picture while keeping the action rooted in its main character’s personal conundrum. But Nemes lets those details steadily assemble rather than establishing them upfront. Slowly, it’s revealed that former locksmith Saul Auslander (Geza Rohrig) has been tasked with disposing of gas chamber victims, one of whom he believes to be his long-lost son.
In the first shot of Hungarian director László Nemes’ absorbing Holocaust thriller “ Son of Saul,” the ill-fated protagonist stumbles into frame and arrives in an unflattering closeup, his grimy face and tattered prison camp clothes establishing an unseemly portrait.