Son of Saul

Composite Score: 86.43

Starring: Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn, Jerzy Walczak, Sándor Zsótér, Márton Ágh, István Pion, and Juli Jakab

Director: László Nemes

Writers: László Nemes and Clara Royer

Genres: Drama, History, War

MPAA Rating: R for disturbing violent content and some graphic nudity

Box Office: $6.66 million worldwide

My take on Watching This Film:

                Son of Saul is László Nemes’s film about a Sonderkommando at Auschwitz toward the end of World War II and his quest to obtain a proper burial for the body of a boy that he finds among the dead in one of the gas chambers where he works. The film follows Saul Ausländer as his search for a rabbi in the camp entangles him in a plot among the other Sonderkommandos to fight back against their Nazi wardens and escape, bringing evidence of the Holocaust with them to whatever Allied forces they can join up with. Saul’s day spent traversing the various areas of the camp provides a harrying look at the atrocities of the Holocaust, reminiscent of this past year’s Best Picture nominee The Zone of Interest, as Nemes has chosen to showcase virtually only Saul’s face or those things in his immediate vicinity, providing blurred outlines and the sounds of everything else in extended shots that up the intensity greatly. Also like The Zone of Interest, Son of Saul won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (now Best International Feature) thanks to Nemes’s clear vision and the haunting story that it tells.

                Son of Saul works well as a fresh take on Holocaust films because it understands that its audience knows what is going on beyond the frame of the camera lens and uses that to showcase its impact on a single character – Saul – about whom the audience knows very little beyond his name and position but whose emotional state is made so readily apparent by the excellent camerawork from Mátyás Erdély and performance of Géza Röhrig. The story and characters become almost secondary to the spiritual and emotional liberation that Saul is seeking in his pursuit of granting some semblance of dignity to this one child that drew his attention among so many faceless corpses. I don’t know that this pursuit of purpose will resonate equally with every audience, and even I found myself a bit out of sorts with the film’s ending, but its presentation, style, sound design, and central performance are so excellent that some of its more obtuse ambiguities can be forgiven for the sake of originality and execution of vision.

                While Son of Saul is not quite as ubiquitously digestible as Spielberg’s Schindler’s List or Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful, it still offers yet another unique and impactful take on the Holocaust that goes beyond showcasing its horrors or garnering sympathy for its victims to celebrate the will of those who lived through it, earning this film also a spot among the greats. It’s certainly not an easy film to watch for both emotional and processing reasons, but those who sit down for it will definitely find themselves with a new masterpiece of storytelling on their hands. If you’d like to give it a shot, this film is currently available to rent on most streaming platforms.