Review of Son of Saul (2015) by Anthony B — 18 Dec 2015
To my mind Son of Saul, about life as a sonderkommando, a Jewish prisoner forced to deal with the corpses of his fellow prisoners at Auschwitz, is a slam dunk to win the best foreign film Oscar for Hungary.
Shot handheld from Saul's (Geza Rohrig) point of view, we follow him around this busy death factory, doing everything at the double. For these workers are living on borrowed time. Not only can they be shot on a whim, but they know sonderkommandos are regularly exterminated for knowing too much.
Much of the action is communicated through sounds-of shots, of prisoners frantically beating on the walls of the gas chambers, of guards constantly urging workers to move faster. Conversation between prisoners is managed in furtive bursts.
No one's a friend. Today's followers of far-right demagogues need to see what can happen when one gets in power.
This review of Son of Saul (2015) was written by Anthony B on 18 Dec 2015.
Son of Saul has generally received very positive reviews.
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