In my quest to expand my film horizon’s I’m trying to watch more critically acclaimed films. With that in mind, I also very much want to watch more foreign films. Son of Saul was the 2016 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film so I added it to my DVD.com que. I knew going in the film would be a tough watch given the subject matter, and while much of the film was well executed, it did feel as though it were missing something earning it the rating of Not Quite Golden, Ponyboy.
What is Son of Saul?
During World War II, a Jewish worker, Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig), at the Auschwitz concentration camp attempts to rescue the body of a young boy from the mass cremations. He makes it his mission to find a rabbi to give the child a proper burial at the risk of his life and the lives of the other jewish workers.
The film is shot predominantly in close up with a very shallow depth of field so that we are very much aware of Saul and what he is doing. It’s an interesting way of letting the audience see the horrors of Auschwitz without clearly seeing them. We see blurry, horrific piles of bodies, blood being scrubbed from the floors, and subtitles dehumanizing the Jewish victims by calling them “it” and “pieces.” The emotions that come across Röhrig’s face are intense and reflect what one would expect to feel in such a terrible situation.
László Nemes is the director and one of the writers, along with Clara Royer, for the film and his first feature. He does a fantastic job establishing the tone the film needs to carry the weight of the Auschwitz concentration camp and the acts that transpire there. It was an interesting choice to keep much of the events at a distance and focusing on Saul’s story. In many instances it works very well, and carries an originality with it that isn’t often found in holocaust stories.
At the same time, I think the emotional weight of the situation is lost on the audience and his story can’t compare to the bigger picture. While I can’t pretend to be able to empathize with anyone who went through that, a lot of the actions Saul takes in the film seem like obviously the wrong ones. I appreciate what he is trying to do by burying the child, the risks he takes in order to do it are felt throughout the film. Abraham (Levente Molnár) says to Saul, “ You have failed the living over the dead,” and that reflected my take on a lot of the actions in the film.
There is no question that Son of Saul is a well made film that demonstrates the horrors of World War II. The visuals are interesting and the story unique in many ways. The character motivations just didn’t quite register with me, but again I can’t expect to understand what a person in that situation would be going through.
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