Son of Saul, is without any doubt, the most horrific film I have ever seen. It left me numb,and in shock, while my wife felt physically sick. Watching it is something of an endurance test for the viewer - and yet despite this, it has won countless accolades including the Cannes Grand Prix, and the 2015 Academy Award for best foreign language film. What is it that made the film juries, and the countless critics who's scores accumulate to 95% approval on the Rotten Tomatoes meta-critic site, so endorse this appalling spectacle? There are several reasons:
The first is that this is a film about truth. The action takes place over two-days in the heart of the Nazi's death-camp at Auschwitz. Using the best first-hand account of how the industrial scale murder-factories looked, were run, staffed and organised, the details of the story-line might be fictitious; but they are rooted in truth. Life in the camps has been depicted before, in films like Schindler's List, where the viewer thought for a moment that they were going to be asked to watch a mass murder by gas; but are spared at the last second. Likewise, I've seen disturbing depictions of the labour-camps before; but Son of Saul, is set right in the heart of the killing. László Nemes might just spare us the sight of the asphyxiations themselves, but he does not spare us the victims screams - and hopeless banging on the gas-chamber doors.
The central character, Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig), is a Hungarian Jew. imprisoned in the death-camp. Primo Levi, in "The Drowned and The Saved", his Auschwitz memoir, describes the various roles prisoners were given. The useful like him, were put to hard labour, others were selected for medical experiments, while others were condemned to what he called "The Gray Zone", that is joining the Sonderkommando. These most wretched of souls gained a few months of life, by running the death-machine. Saul, was a Sondercommando, and we first meet him herding fellow Hungarian Jews to their death, taking their possessions for the Nazi's, hauling out the naked bodies from the gas-chambers, and scrubbing them clean for the next train-load. This is so intense, so incomprehensible, that it is hard to watch. However, the fact that this happened, as recently as in my parents' lifetime, means that it has to be faced.
The second reason that the film has been so lauded is the extraordinary cinematography. In interviews, László Nemes has described shooting the film in a messy way, all from human-eye-level. The fact that the narrow depth of field means that the main characters faces are in focus, but the background is constantly out, is also remarkable. It creates initially a sense that Saul has his head-down, trying to avoid seeing, what is all around him; the eye-level filming drawing the viewer right into the hell. The strangely muffled sound-track adds to this curious sense of the recoiling-self seeking to protect itself through a form of cognitive dissonance. This technique also allows the filmmaker to allow the horror of the gas chambers to appear on screen - while seeking to avoid the gratuitous, or prurient details the focus of the shot. Saul, has to help remove the naked corpses of the newly-slain from the gas-chambers. Yet, while the bodies are dragged, with no ceremony or dignity whatsoever; László Nemes places them just beyond the focal length of his cameras. The result is visually striking, absorbing and deeply, deeply disturbing.
The third, and most important reason that Son of Saul resonates so powerfully with audiences and critics, is that it is ultimately a film about humanity. The underlying narrative is that the Nazis denied that the Jews were human; and treated them in accordance with this twisted view - and as a result lived in complete denial of their own humanity. I was sickened by the way the Nazis called the dead "pieces", unable to face up to, or even comprehend what they had just done. I believe it was Auschwitz survivor Rabbi Hugo Gryn (1930-1996), who says that he never once asked "Where God was in Auschwitz"; but was constantly asking, "Where is humanity?". Despite the loss of his liberty, dignity, morality, hope and the abject denial of his humanity, Saul, of the Sonderkommando, holds onto one tiny shred of his personhood. Without spoiling the plot, Saul is determined to find a Rabbi, amongst the prisoners, and give a proper burial to one small dead Hungarian-Jewish boy from the holocaust. This one body, like that of the 'unknown soldier' of WWI, comes to mean much more than just itself; but a representative of wounded humanity. Saul's bewildering desire to commend his 'son' to the earth and to God, is a powerful portrait of a man clinging to some shred of humanity, while living in a hell-on-earth. The one thing with which he will not be parted, is his desire to give one little human the right departure, and to commend him to God with some dignity.
That beautiful, yet minute thread of light, is the only hope found in this horrendous depiction of evil. I'm sure that watching it was the right thing to do. I don't think I could watch it again though.
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