From there, Hungarian director and co-writer László Nemes follows Saul as he goes about his daily work herding new arrivals toward the undressing room and into the gas chamber. (Doctors actually refer to the body as an “it”—a thing that needs to be taken someplace.) It was't a plead for mercy or anything; it was just him, looking at the boy (and therefore, at us), trying to say "I'm human, too.". My goal is to help women who are hurting to discover  there is hope, faith and love regardless of what she may be dealing with and to grow in her faith. It follows someone who is, indeed, innocent, yet who also knows that there is something disastrous going on (he hears the gun shots). [23] On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 96% based on reviews from 229 critics, with an average rating of 8.90/10. At one point a colleague admonishes Saul, “You failed the living for the dead,” and he’s not wrong. Nemes conceived of the film from the book The Scrolls of Auschwitz, a collection of testimonies by Sonderkommando members,[13] after discovering it during the production of Béla Tarr's The Man from London in 2005 when he was working as Tarr's assistant.
He writes: "Shot (and shown in Cannes) on 35mm, often in sickly greens and yellows and with deep shadows, Erdely's cinematography is one of the film's major assets, but it wouldn't be half as effective without the soundwork, which plays a major role in suggesting what is happening around Saul, with audiences often forced to rely on the sound to imagine the whole, horrible picture". I have a different take and may need to watch the film again, and welcome any correction. five years old when his father and grandfather was killed. Despite his best efforts, he loses the body in a lake. [31], Claude Lanzmann, director of the documentary Shoah, gave the film high praise,[32] stating that "it's a very new film, very original, very unusual. it was almost as if he was reflecting on everything that just happened. Perhaps it lightens his load to share some with us. Notice how the hair color in pretty much everyone in the film is dark. [16] New York City-based Hungarian poet Géza Röhrig, who had not acted in film since the 1980s, was cast as the main character, Saul, after being considered originally for a supporting role. All Rights Reserved. [2] The film is composed of 85 shots.
It's not at all melodramatic. Saul then sneaks onto a truck for another Sonderkommando unit, heading to a nearby riverbank, where the ashes from the crematoria are dumped into the river. It's a film that gives a very real sense of what it was like to be in the Sonderkommando. Parents Guide. Röhrig carries the weight of that uncertainty in his bony, rolling shoulders, and in the depths of his eyes. “Son of Saul” begins with a long, unbroken shot of mesmerizing intricacy. Even as he’s trying to preserve the boy’s soul, his fellow prisoners, knowing their own execution is imminent, plan an escape.

Saul may have some issues in dealing with the other men who may see their own task as more important and incompatible with his. That is, until he sees the body of a boy on the verge of death, whom doctors quickly suffocate. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts.

Saul defeated many of the enemies of his country, including the … i agree that the boy symbolized death but i think Saul smiled because he's happy that he did reclaim "life" again. He is so focus on this task that he is careless when it comes to retrieving gunpowder for his friends to help construct an uprising. The year is 1944 at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Saul goes in search of a Rabbi to perform the funeral ritual. Saul is savvy and resourceful, traits he must use again and again to survive over the course of a harrowing couple of days. Gunshots pierce the night sky and flames turn the whole scene into a vision of hell on Earth. “Son of Saul” is a movie that requires attention and patience, with a script from Nemes and Clara Royer that’s often wordless or whispered. It gave meaning to his life and dignity such as was outlined in terrence des pres book, the Survivor. Do we do as the boy does and run into the forest in order to keep a shattered innocence? Two days in the life of Saul Auslander, Hungarian prisoner working as a member of the Sonderkommando at one of the Auschwitz Crematoriums who, to bury the corpse of a boy he takes for his son, tries to carry out his impossible deed: salvage the body and find a rabbi to bury it. Saul Auslaender (Geza Rohrig, a Hungarian poet and occasional actor) slowly walks into focus at the start of Son of Saul, but the camera will then rarely leave him until the end. When they have all passed, the officer releases him, and the camera follows the boy into the woods, as the sound of gunfire echoes behind him. Saul fails in this task however. for disturbing violent content, and some graphic nudity. He works stoically, seemingly having been numbed by the daily horrors. Saul is on duty when a boy, near miraculously, survives the gas chamber—the young man is quickly put to death by a camp doctor, and an autopsy is ordered, to determine what made him so tenacious. A Frenchman named Braun approaches him and convinces Saul that he is a rabbi. [16], In Hungary, the film was released on 11 June 2015 and sold more than 220,000 tickets, placing it as the highest-grossing domestic film released since the slapstick comedy Üvegtigris 3 in 2010. [14][15], The project struggled to find financial backers due to the film's unconventional approach and Nemes's lack of experience in directing a feature film. Biederman discloses the information to Abraham, who instructs Saul to head to the women's camp, where he will pick up a smuggled package of gunpowder from a prisoner named Ella. In October 1944, Saul Ausländer works as a Sonderkommando Jewish–Hungarian prisoner in Auschwitz. Directed by László Nemes. Unable to manage the current with the added weight, he loses his grasp on the sack and is pulled out of the river by Rabbi Frankel as the body floats away. Nemes stays close, showing us only what Saul sees, photographing him from the back or the side, Dardennes-style, as he walks purposefully toward each destination. Now one would think Saul would be devastated after this, and for a while he is, but after he sees a little blond peasant boy through a door of a shack his group are hiding out in, he shows his first sign of happiness in the entire movies. remember them and what happened there." Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here. Son of Saul (Hungarian: Saul fia) is a 2015 Hungarian drama film directed by László Nemes, in his feature directorial debut, and co-written by Nemes and Clara Royer.It is set in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, and follows a day-and-a-half in the life of Saul Ausländer (played by Géza Röhrig), a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando. It turns out that the rabbi is actually a fraud and can't recite the kaddish. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. To me, it seems like the camera pausing (no longer following Saul, nor the boy) is a reflective flip. [2], The film took five months of sound design. In the context of the surrounding horrors, it’s a fool’s errand. The prisoners are then summoned into the crematorium to get back to work, where they discover that Biederman and his unit have been gassed by the SS. In particular, the dead on stare into the camera by both the boy and Saul. perished with his father and brothers at the Battle of Gilboa, Malchishua—means King of help; he Many excellent films have dealt with the heavy subject matter of Son of Saul. Praise for thing movie aside, one aspect of this gritty Holocaust drama that I cannot stop thinking about is the ending. | [4], The film premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival,[5] where it won the Grand Prix. A Jewish-Hungarian concentration camp prisoner sets out to give a child he mistook for his son a proper burial. For all its intensity, Son of Saul is never ponderous. Among the dead after a gassing is a boy who is still barely alive, and Saul witnesses a Nazi physician suffocate the boy and call for an autopsy. treason. To me, and of course, it's up to interpretation, him smiling at the boy represented his last hope at trying to empathize with another. Son of Saul (Hungarian: Saul fia) is a 2015 Hungarian drama film directed by László Nemes, in his feature directorial debut, and co-written by Nemes and Clara Royer. [...] "Son of Saul sees humanity in effort, identity in action; it watches someone with nothing, a man reduced to a statistic, get a piece of himself back, mostly by finding some meaning in a place of meaningless evil". A title card at the beginning of Son of Saul tells us that members of the Sonderkommando were also referred to as “bearers of secrets.” Saul is bearing so many. Christy reviewed films for The Associated Press for over 14 years. I share encouragement through Life Application  and Biblical Application, along with my love of music and history into my site. [20][21], Architect and liberal activist László Rajk, who also worked on the permanent Hungarian exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, designed the re-creation of the crematoria. Its director and co-writer, Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes (making his feature-film debut), isn’t just re-creating unspeakable sadness but electrifying it with a kind of somber energy. Saul and these men's work also entails disinfecting the gas chamber after use, going through the personal possessions of the dead looking for any items of value, and disposing of the ashes after the bodies are burned. Edit: I like what /u/Jewth said as well, makes a lot of sense in context for the film. It moves so quickly, and relies so little on dialogue, that you need to race a little to keep up with it, and to keep your eyes open every second. WWII. An excellent foreign film.