Movie Review: Son of Saul (Hungarian)
I watched Son of Saul (Saul Fia in Hungarian) more than an year ago, the week it opened at Film Forum in New York City with just a handful of people in the theatre. But somehow I never got around to penning my thoughts on the movie all this time. Not that it requires my stamp of approval. It is extraordinary as is. For never has there been a movie that stunned me into silence for its cinematic technique as much as for its unsettling depiction of the Holocaust. It's a difficult watch, yes, but also one that's immensely rewarding.
"Even in the darkest hours of mankind, there might be a voice within that allows us to remain human, that's the hope of this film," said director László Nemes after the film won the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film last year. Son of Saul, at its very soul, is a movie about hope. Not survival. It toys, teases and tantalises with the idea until the very last moment when it becomes amply clear that what has to happen will happen no matter what. Expecting a happy ending is like wanting a shade in the middle of a desert.
The movie unfolds through the eyes of Saul - what he sees is what we see, the camera following him up close, either from the back or the side. Like as if he were some sort of a tour guide, giving us a peek into the horrors of Auschwitz. The atrocities themselves remain in the periphery, almost off camera, yet its presence is palpable. You hear the screams of torture, the sounds of dead bodies being dragged across the floor, and you immediately realise this isn't so much a visual experience as it's aural.
The effect is at once chilling and unnerving. Startlingly intimate and personal. But for Saul (Hungarian poet Géza Röhrig making his film debut), it's nothing. He feels nothing. He is deadened inside-out, finding little cheer or reason in surviving as a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people. That is, until he discovers a child who appears to have miraculously escaped the deadly clutches of the gas chamber. He takes the boy to a Nazi doctor in hopes that he may get to survive but he is promptly suffocated to death. Saul is however drawn to him, and convinced he is his son (hence the title, but cleverly never confirmed), embarks on a quest to give him a decent Jewish burial. It invigorates him with a new lease of life. A sense of purpose. Hope.
Even if it's chaos that reigns all around him in the camp. The atmosphere charged and electrifying, with other members of the Sonderkommando busy plotting an escape and a rebellion, however life-threatening both choices may be. It's their only choice, after all. There is even an attempt to steal a camera and photograph the war crimes for what they are and smuggle them outside the camp to seek help. But Saul remains singularly unaffected. It's as if he had come to terms with his pre-ordained fate and his only mission in life is to give his son a burial he deserved rather than sending him to a mass grave to be burnt. He is so obsessed with this pursuit that at one point it imperils the group's escape plans, leading one of his colleagues to admonish Saul thus - "You failed the living for the dead."
The Holocaust is a subject so traumatic, brutal and repulsive that it's not so easy to bring it alive on screen. Phoenix did it, but in its own personal way, far away from the epicentre of one of mankind's cataclysmic horrors. Not Son of Saul. It's thus easy to label Nemes' stunning debut directorial effort as immersive, but calling it so is a disservice to this remarkable tale of hope, a recreation of not just a story of unspeakable sadness, but also for making us deeply care about Saul just as he cares for his son. Claustrophobic, disconcerting and humane, Son of Saul is a riveting piece of cinema.
The movie unfolds through the eyes of Saul - what he sees is what we see, the camera following him up close, either from the back or the side. Like as if he were some sort of a tour guide, giving us a peek into the horrors of Auschwitz. The atrocities themselves remain in the periphery, almost off camera, yet its presence is palpable. You hear the screams of torture, the sounds of dead bodies being dragged across the floor, and you immediately realise this isn't so much a visual experience as it's aural.
The effect is at once chilling and unnerving. Startlingly intimate and personal. But for Saul (Hungarian poet Géza Röhrig making his film debut), it's nothing. He feels nothing. He is deadened inside-out, finding little cheer or reason in surviving as a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people. That is, until he discovers a child who appears to have miraculously escaped the deadly clutches of the gas chamber. He takes the boy to a Nazi doctor in hopes that he may get to survive but he is promptly suffocated to death. Saul is however drawn to him, and convinced he is his son (hence the title, but cleverly never confirmed), embarks on a quest to give him a decent Jewish burial. It invigorates him with a new lease of life. A sense of purpose. Hope.
Even if it's chaos that reigns all around him in the camp. The atmosphere charged and electrifying, with other members of the Sonderkommando busy plotting an escape and a rebellion, however life-threatening both choices may be. It's their only choice, after all. There is even an attempt to steal a camera and photograph the war crimes for what they are and smuggle them outside the camp to seek help. But Saul remains singularly unaffected. It's as if he had come to terms with his pre-ordained fate and his only mission in life is to give his son a burial he deserved rather than sending him to a mass grave to be burnt. He is so obsessed with this pursuit that at one point it imperils the group's escape plans, leading one of his colleagues to admonish Saul thus - "You failed the living for the dead."
The Holocaust is a subject so traumatic, brutal and repulsive that it's not so easy to bring it alive on screen. Phoenix did it, but in its own personal way, far away from the epicentre of one of mankind's cataclysmic horrors. Not Son of Saul. It's thus easy to label Nemes' stunning debut directorial effort as immersive, but calling it so is a disservice to this remarkable tale of hope, a recreation of not just a story of unspeakable sadness, but also for making us deeply care about Saul just as he cares for his son. Claustrophobic, disconcerting and humane, Son of Saul is a riveting piece of cinema.
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