Synopsis
In the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival trying to save from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son.
2015 ‘Saul fia’ Directed by László Nemes
In the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival trying to save from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son.
Géza Röhrig Levente Molnár Urs Rechn Todd Charmont Jerzy Walczak Balázs Farkas Gergö Farkas Sándor Zsótér Marcin Czarnik Levente Orbán Kamil Dobrowolski Uwe Lauer Christian Harting Attila Fritz Mihály Kormos Márton Ágh Amitai Kedar István Pion Juli Jakab Tamás Polgár Rozi Székely Ernő Fekete László Somorjai Eszter Csépai Zoltán Cservák Péter Fancsikai Csaba Formanek Björn Freiberg Tamás Herczeg Show All…
El hijo de Saúl, Sauls sønn, Filho de Saul, O Filho de Saul, 사울의 아들, Sauls son, Le Fils de Saul, Il figlio di Saul, 索尔之子, הבן של שאול, Son Of Saul, Ο Γιος του Σαούλ, Syn Szawła, Fiul lui Saul, Сын Саула, 索爾之子, Saulův syn, Saul'un Oğlu, Saulin poika, Sauls søn, Син Саула, El fill de Saül, Синът на Саул, 天堂無門, サウルの息子, Con Trai Của Saul, საულის შვილი
Not only the best film that I saw at the Cannes Film Festival, but one of the greatest films ever made... and I've been trying to cut down on my hyperbole lately, so trust me when I say that Son of Saul is truly a contemporary masterwork, from it's lead performance to it's immense tracking shots to it's impeccable sound design.
And it's a goddamn directorial debut...
how
The latest recipient of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Son of Saul (Saul fia) is an incredibly powerful, relentlessly grim & downright disturbing cinema that takes a leaflet out of mankind's darkest period and weaves an original, absorbing & deeply affecting story around it, all depicted in a manner that only magnifies the haunting horrors of the Holocaust.
The story takes place inside the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II and covers a day or two in the life of a Hungarian-Jewish prisoner who, along with a selected few, is tasked with the disposal of the corpses of gas chamber victims. The plot follows his dangerous & desperate attempt to provide a proper Jewish burial to the body of…
ENGISH below
"Son of Saul" ist ein filmisches Meisterwerk, das versucht, das Unvorstellbare darzustellen: den Holocaust. Der Film von László Nemes schafft es auf beeindruckende/entsetzliche Weise, die Grausamkeit und Brutalität der Vernichtungslager zu thematisieren, ohne dabei auf direkte Bilder der Gewalt zurückzugreifen.
Die Eröffnungsszene des Films ist ein brillantes Beispiel für die subtile Herangehensweise von Nemes. Durch eine unscharfe Darstellung wird die Wahrnehmung des Publikums eingeschränkt, und erst nach und nach kristallisiert sich das Bild eines Mannes heraus – Saul, verkörpert von Géza Röhrig. Als Mitglied des Sonderkommandos ist Saul gezwungen, in den Lagern mit den Nazis zusammenzuarbeiten, indem er die Opfer in die Gaskammern begleitet und ihre Körper danach beseitigt.
Die eindringliche Kameraführung, die hauptsächlich auf Sauls Gesicht fokussiert…
TIFF15 Film #1
Reason for Pick – Cannes Grand Jury Prize winner
Hungarian director László Nemes inaugural film captures not only the Grand Jury, but also the François Chalais Award, FIPRESCI Prize, and Vulcain Prize for the Technical Artist, and it’s not hard to see why.
A concentration camp film, but set from the perspective of Saul, a Jewish conscripted ‘special keeper of secrets’ worker, of which there are shockingly many. An event triggers Saul, who knows his time is limited, to devote his remaining life to one act of simple dignity.
When I say the film is from Saul’s perspective, it is not simply narratively, as there is precious little narrative, I rather mean that the camera ‘becomes’ Saul,…
Undoubtedly one of the most harrowing openings and closings to a film in recent memory.
Laszlo Nemes brings a fresh, mechanical air of death to the exhausted subgenre of Holocaust depictions. We don't see much of the horror that Saul sees, maybe because he is subconsciously blocking it, but more likely because it isn't necessary to sense the full scale of murder at hand.
Highly stylized while remaining brutally honest, Son of Saul exposes the American cinematic view of the Holocaust through Spielberg's film as frankly naive. To place death in the foreground as something special is simply dishonest to the reality of the death camps. Death was entirely routine, and ultimately the mundanity of death in the blurred background…
Son of Saul is a brutally visceral, but all the more unforgettable portrait of the Holocaust. Here, director László Nemes crafts a soul-breaking masterpiece that conveys the horrors of life in the concentration camp with a lingering focus, forcing us to follow Saul and observe his journey as a distant voyeur, unable to do anything about the horrors inflicted upon the people in his surroundings. It's a head-on confrontation with the brutality and dehumanization of the Holocaust, a quest for dignity and humanity in a world that has no room for either. Tears your soul into pieces without putting them together again–but how could it?
technically efficient yet exploitative in the bad way, a holocaust interactive thrill ride experience posing as a prestige picture, no one really matters, the victims are unimportant, they're just obstacles between the protagonist's checkpoints. pseudo redemption for a man that helped to murder thousands of innocents for the sake of survival but have his redemption come in the sake of not helping saving other people's lives but in burying a body. he wanders by the faceless, meaningless victims because they do not matter, only nemes' aggressive posturing formalism matters, this is where empathy and humanity goes to die. i feel so much pain for the victims of this unfathomable atrocity, it fucking hurts to know that so many people died…
We observe Auschwitz-Birkenau in the only way we could bear: at the corners of the frame, where screams are heard but not seen and the bodies being dragged pass by as white, abstract flashes. Or perhaps the method makes things worse by inflaming our cursed imaginations. Either way, applying this extreme cinematic technique to incomprehensible history made for a monumental viewing experience, a way of relocating mass atrocity to a personal level. By blurring all else and confining us to one man’s experience, Son of Saul zeroes in on humanity in the singular, reminding us how every single life that was snuffed out distinctly mattered. After the picture is over and we take a breath, pausing to consider the bigger history that encompasses Saul’s story, the large-scale loss of the Holocaust feels all the more catastrophic.
Full review here.
*insert hilarious Better Call Saul joke”
I’ll actually write a review and give a rating after we record the podcast.
Yeah it’s amazing, it’s in the same tier with Come and See and Schindler’s List for completely different and unique reasons. I think from a thematic, technical, and story point of view this film is perfect.
10/10