If you’ve seen a few too many uninspired Holocaust dramas like I have, you might start to think that the subject is played out and that there’s no way to tell this chapter of history differently. Son of Saul manages to bring the horror home in a fresh way, which is a major reason why it won both the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
The Saul in the title is Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig), a Hungarian Jew working in Auschwitz in 1944 as part of a deputation of Jews who help the Nazis exterminate their fellow inmates in the concentration camp in exchange for a few extra months of life. For reasons that become clear later, he starts to obsess over a young boy who somehow survives the gas chamber, at least until the doctor suffocates him. Saul wants to give the boy a proper Jewish burial, but his efforts might interfere with a planned prison break.
Except for the very first and last shots, the entire film takes place around Saul, as the camera rarely ventures more than arm’s length away from his face. This subjectivity and extreme realism (there’s no background music) is the movie’s calling card, but it’s more than just a gimmick. It reflects Saul’s state of mind — he copes with the death and suffering around him by shutting it out as much as possible, keeping his head down and concentrating on the work in front of him without attracting his guards’ attention. Still, it all keeps creeping back in, as awful things happen to people just off camera or in the deep background, out of focus. Director/co-writer László Nemes is a first-time filmmaker who creates a vision of the Holocaust as a particular kind of industrial hell, making you feel the oppressive heat of the furnaces that power Auschwitz and subjecting you to the relentless grinding of the machinery that kills its victims. The toll of this is reflected in the craggy face of Röhrig, who plays it all with an unforgettable thousand-yard stare.
Saul’s last name is the German word for “foreigners.” I suspect there are more similar verbal cues in the script that I would pick up if I were fluent in Hungarian. (I did detect a few errors in the subtitles’ German translations.) As my non-Hungarian-speaking self experiences it, the film isn’t all that deep, and Saul’s relationship to the dead boy isn’t a sufficient counterweight to all the misery we see. Sometimes, though, it’s enough for a movie to act as a visceral experience, and Son of Saul surely succeeds as such, plunging us into the depths of despair and then blasting us out again, shocked and wiser.
[box_info]Son of Saul
Starring Géza Röhrig. Directed by László Nemes. Written by László Nemes and Clara Royer. Rated R. Now playing in Dallas.[/box_info]
