Review of Son of Saul (2015) by Matt W — 17 Jul 2016

Son of Saul is a relentless, utterly horrifying yet utterly absorbing journey into the very depths of hell, namely the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, strictly from the point of view of a Hungarian Sonderkommando named Saul (Géza Röhrig).

The film, directed by László Nemes, in his debut feature, is an uncompromising and vivid nightmare put to screen. Shot in a claustrophobic 1.37:1 aspect ratio and with an extremely shallow depth of field, Nemes follows Géza Röhrig's Saul through the labyrinth of bodies and smoke, never straying more then a few feet from our protagonist. As such, we as the audience are fully immersed in the complete horror of this existence, where an endless, factory like cycle of death and suffering grinds away, with astounding sound design perfectly invoking hell on earth. The perpetual rumble of the Crematoriums, the shrieks of agony as hundreds of prisoners are gassed at a time and an endless series of repeated orders from the guards. It's one of the most completely immersive cinematic experiences I've had, and therefore is a heavily emotional and heart-rending experience.

Géza Röhrig's performance is astounding, as his Saul is a man of few words, yet great determination as he seeks a Rabbi to help bury a body of a boy he fully believes to be his own son. His eyes are filled with an intense, broken sadness, while his body moves with the bedraggled pace of a man at the end of his rope, yet forced to continue onward. The rest of the small, tightly packed cast, are all excellent as well, embodying the raw, primal desperation that this kind of a life fosters in people.

Son of Saul is an unsentimental, brutal film. It takes no prisoners in its unflinching documentation of just how utterly horrific the Holocaust really was, in every possible way. It's an incredibly difficult watch, yet an undeniably necessary one, and an entirely deserving winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Five out of five stars.