Son of Saul

Easily tagged as a Holocaust film (but shouldn't necessarily be), 'Son of Saul' explores the perspective of a Sonderkommando named Saul — a German Nazi death camp prisoner who's job was to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims — who finds a dying boy from the chambers and attempts to give him a proper burial who he claims to be his son, all during his time at Auschwitz. The film is uniquely shot from an over-the-shoulder perspective that keeps the viewer entirely focused on Saul, but still with the motions and actions surrounding him very noticeable (thanks to absolutely brilliant sound work in order to help achieve the eerie feel). 'Saul' reaches certain pinnacles of significant discomfort during scenes of execution — in the gas chambers and the burial pits — and a stone-faced Saul can do nothing but be forced to listen or watch. At points, the viewer feels claustrophobic when being ushered from the trucks in the middle of the night to one's fate. While the main story of Saul's attempt to give his "son" a proper Jewish burial is what drives him — already accepting his own fate — the film goes beyond the typical WWII Holocaust story where you might only hear of incidents. In this film, the viewer is thrust upon into the fray of Hell, constantly following Saul through several one-shot takes that leave you wondering what is waiting for him. A word to the wise: this film prides itself on authenticity, realism, and truth; 'Son of Saul' is painfully poetic.

After the news about the movie's success in Cannes, there was a lot of conversation about whether we need "yet another" movie about the Holocaust. Still, as I watched the movie, I have realized that the main subject of it is not the Holocaust itself, but rather the human and his choices between morality and necessities, between family and strangers, between dead and alive. And, this is that makes this movie a perfect 10 for me: the painfully precise reconstruction of the mass murder and the almost PoV-esque, brutally relivable presentation of Auschwitz's everyday is just the beginning, just the setting. Still, I cannot overemphasize it that the reconstruction feels so realistic thanks to the filming style (the viewer remains so close to Saul, the protagonist, that almost smells him), the acting (that is, basically showing empty shells of seemingly living people in most of the movie) and the details (people using myriad of languages, mainly Yiddish to communicate, for example). So, if Holocaust is just the setting, what is it really about then? It reminded me of a Greek drama with a protagonist, who has big choices with tragic consequences, with very clear dilemmas. With a big difference that you cannot hope of a divine intervention at the end – although as a viewer, I can understand if somebody hopes that some kind of happy ending will close the movie, after all, some kind of (even unreal) hope makes the members of the Sonderkommando alive as well. If you see a "Holocaust movie", you end up wondering about how this could happen (and why is it happening again and again). In Saul's Son, you will be haunted by the pictures of the killings and by the partly banal practicalities related of it, but the main question will be: what would have YOU done, not as a Jew, but as someone who is on the blurry borderline between victims and collaborators, as a parent, as a comrade… as a HUMAN? and that makes it way more than "just" a (quite revolutionary) Holocaust movie for me. Recommended for anyone who feels like 110 minutes of pain (it is, really, painful to watch) is worth to have an experience of visiting some dark edges of our humanity.

I start by saying that I didn't read anything about "Son of Saul" before going to the theater, and that I didn't know whether it had received bad or good comments. "Son of Saul" is not entirely bad and I think it's worth to see it, but it looks to me out of focus. I'm aware that the documentary - first person point of view is what the director wanted to give us, but I don't like it. Everything is so shaky, the hat of Saul is always cut and the background is blurred. I don't think that this setting adds up something to the movie. What is more important: I consider that the story is out of focus. There is realism - what the prisoners were told to be reassured in the undressing rooms (hot tea - hot coffee - hot soup waiting for them, disinfection, remember what's the number of your hook), the differences between people and their social background, with a lot of languages and a bad German used as a lingua franca, the dehumanization of the prisoners that obviously can't handle that kind of monstrosities, the word used for the corpses, that is "stucke", pieces, and the enormous rush required to the Nazi guards in order to be able to "process" (that's the term they used) all the people daily "resettled" to Auschwitz. I saw few days ago the monumental documentary of Claude Lanzmann called Shoah, and I think that the director of "Son of Saul" saw it too, because the "quotes" are a lot. But in all this background blurred realism, I can't get the purpose of the main character, that struggles to carry out a task that in my opinion doesn't make sense. It looks pretty clear to me that Saul has got no sons, since he had told so to his fellow coworkers, and he has no tears for the poor young kid, but still he feels compelled to give him a proper Jewish burial. I understand that in Auschwitz the action of risking one's own life has a completely different meaning than what it does in normal contests, and Saul states that too ("we are already dead"), anyway I still think that this movie is a good chance that has been missed.

'Son of Saul' started off with a refreshing burst, but barely a quarter in, it meanders on its own overly self-conscious showiness. It becomes painfully obvious that there's a director and production crew behind it trying too hard to drive the impact and be different, resulting in a showy look-at-me stilted performances from its actors and even the set screams "wow aren't we just realistic and meticulous in our details", like a bratty girl twirling her hula-hoop in a vigorously attention seeking manner. The core motivation of Saul in trying to get 'a random son' buried is …… nada. The entire essence of this movie pivots on this core 'motivation'. Without it, there is only the mundane uninteresting idiosyncrasy of Saul - drifting in the sea of all the other equally mundane idiosyncrasies, all of which are equally uninteresting. The actors (both the clothed and the naked) are way too healthy and lackadaisically bland in their appearances and attitudes, lacking any anguished sense of desperation and despair. As you watch them and the overly-crafted sets, you can't help but be 'constantly aware' that you are watching actors and extras and movie sets going about their motions as directed. Even the constant background chattering sounds consciously deliberate and staged. And the Nazi officers - another bunch of one-dimensional caricatured bullies … same cartoonish-cardboard ones you find in WWII comedies, action genres, dramas, you name it. Hence, even after over an hour into the movie, there is no immersion of oneself into the proceedings of the plot nor in the characters. The most realistic actors on set are the ones playing the dead bodies, but even then their positioning and the manner in which they are piled and dragged around …. overly choreographed. Why did it win the Oscar Best Foreign award? Absolutely no idea - just another no-sense award from Hollywood. Probably it gives the voters a misplaced sense of politically-correct 'artsiness'. 'Son of Saul' has become an obligatory-must-watch-because-its-won-these-bunch-of-awards. A good compelling movie it is NOT. Vain-glorious, and does not impress beyond its first 5 mins of fame.

This film is an astonishing tour-de-force. I don't recall seeing anything like it before. Fictions set in Nazi concentration camps need to be handled very carefully indeed if they are not to diminish, even trivialise, what took place there. Such films are difficult to criticise, because their subject matter is not only historical fact, it is also the ultimate depravity of human beings. Art must deal with it, because nothing can lie outside of art's sphere, but really it is not a fit subject for bad art, such as Spielberg's Schindler's List. With its beautifully-played violin theme and its clever girl-in-the-red-coat in a black-and-white film, Spielberg used the vocabulary of a Hollywood movie to present this profound subject. Nothing that even its very committed actors could do was able to ground the piece in a convincing reality. The result, as far as I was concerned, in spite of what I'm sure were the best of intentions of the director and his team, was little short of repulsive. Since seeing Schindler's List I have steered clear of films attempting to depict life in the camps. I haven't seen Life is Beautiful, for example, nor The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. For all I know, they are works of genius. Son of Saul definitely is: not only does it not betray the cruelty, the tragedy of the camps, it brings it home in such a vivid way that it is sometimes extremely difficult to watch. But it is necessary to watch. In fact, it must be watched more than once, because it is not only emotionally draining, it is also amazing technically, but because it sweeps you up in its reality, it is impossible to take in the technical achievements on only one viewing. Son of Saul was directed by László Nemes, written by Mr Nemes and Clara Royer, and photographed unnervingly by Mátyás Erdély. Saul himself is incarnated by Géza Röhrig, superbly leading an excellent ensemble.

The story, and motivations of the lead character are not captivating in anyway. Focusing on one mans desire to bury the body of one of the many children massacred in a concentration camp, there appears to be little or no meaning in any of it. On top of a slow, laborious storyline, this film is highly depressing, and serves no purpose in the world. Great films are supposed to inspire emotion, and preferably more than just sadness. This film is not the great event that some quarters make out. Sometimes, the grittiness of independent, foreign language films catapults their reach and appeal. For me, this film is a classic case of that phenomenon in action.

I do not understand how the previous commentators were able to add their opinion, since I saw the very first screening of the movie outside Cannes in the Művész arts cinema of Budapest tonight, on May 29, 2015. The movie was followed by a discussion and Q&A session with the artists. Director Nemes aimed to create a movie that is deprived of the post-war artifacts present in most Holocaust movies. For this goal, he and his staff made substantial historical research to make the smallest details truthful. The shooting took place from less than $2 million, in a very short period (28 days). French, Israeli and German investors did not give money for the movie for fear of a loss. As the director mentioned, a movie of this length is spliced together form 300 to 700 cuts these days. Theirs required only 80. You are in the camp, you are Saul Auslander. There is utter confusion, you do not know what awaits you in the next second. This is a reality movie with no happy ending that shakes you.

Not as good as expected. The movie may be artsy but the storyline stinks. It's is not a documentary, but a fictitious story of Saul, a worker at a camp deciding that a dead boy is his son and what he attempts to go through to bury him is thin. Yes, the scenes in the background are horrific, something the artsy types at film schools like. But the movie is slow, limited dialogue, and a lot of long scenes were so long, you can speed things up with fast forward and miss nothing. Basically the movie falls flat and is a waste of time. I give it two stars because the background scenes that depict the horrors from a perspective of Saul are well done. Do not like the shakiness of a hand-held camera that had to track this perspective throughout the movie, or the full screen format, one can overlook those. Overall there are far better movies about this period such as Black List or the Counterfeiters. And if you really want to learn more about this period pick up the book Mans Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl who chronicled his experiences as an Auschwitz concentration camp. Or Auschwitz: A Doctor's Account by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli who was spared from death because he was personal assistant to Dr. Josef Mengele, known as the infamous "Angel of Death." These are real stories by real people. There huge difference between this type of reality (the books) and a fictitious movie.

"Son of Saul" or "Saul fia" is a Hungarian film from last year that won big at Cannes and also took home the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. And in my opinion, the got it wrong again. "ida" was already a pretty weak winner last year and same goes for "Son of Saul". It looks to me as if people are appreciating this film because of the difficult and controversial subject. But this alone should not be enough. A film also has to tell a compelling story and this one does not I think. The film runs for slightly over 100 minutes and most of it, actually everything except the ending, takes place in a concentration camp. Another thing about this movie why it was so successful is that the ending is pretty memorable and dramatic and makes it easy to forget about the boredom from the previous 1.5 hours. But I will not. The writer and director here is László Nemes and he is still pretty young, under 40, so we may hear a lot more from him in the future. i cannot say, however, that this film makes me curious about other projects from him. Lead actor is Géza Röhrig and he is completely new to acting it seems. Taking this into account, he did a pretty good job. I have read people say he should have been nominated for an Oscar, but I cannot agree with that. Still, it was a fairly convincing performance and he carried the film nicely from start to finish, given he was in pretty much every scene from start to finish. It is not his fault that the movie did not turn out so well. The problem is one that I just mentioned. Rührig is in every scene and the camera is always extremely close to him. I found this style of direction pretty unappealing, almost annoying at times. You can see the filmmaker's intention to let the audience perceive the action exactly like the protagonist does, but for me it did not work. This was a major turnoff for me here and I may have liked the film better with another approach by Nemes. But I have seen an older short film by him and it seems that he frequently takes this path. All in all, I do not recommend "Son of Saul". The protagonist's story was interesting only on a couple occasions, but not enough for such a long film and in terms of historic context we learn nothing here that we did not already know about concentration camps and WWII history if we have only very basic knowledge. Thumbs down.

The first 30, 40 minutes of the movie are absolutely brilliant and moving. What a great idea to focus on one man and keep all the atrocities vague. It is no problem to fill in all the gaps yourself. Great sounds. But later on in the movie it gets difficult to still understand the protagonist. Maybe he is really getting crazy - which I would understand - like another reviewer states. But his way of doing gets annoying at a certain point. Also some scenes are not very clear. At the end, Saul started to irritate me. Jeopardizing the lives of others. My main problem with this movie is: it is a movie, not a documentary. The immensity of the Holocaust can't function as a laissez-passer for a weak script.