A middle-aged Jewish man of Hungarian descent comes into focus. His eyes are brown and intense and we soon learn that his name is Saul (Geza Rohrig). This establishing shot lasts for an unbroken five minutes as Saul gently ushers a line of prisoners through the compound, down some stairs and into a cold, sickly colored basement where they are instructed to disrobe and enter the “showers” before they can have their soup. As the heavy metal doors close behind the last Jew, Saul positions himself outside the gas chamber and listens, eyes downcast and expressionless as the sound of terrified yells and the pounding and scratching of failing hands begins to emanate from behind the closed doors.
Perhaps it is this scene and many others like it that has caused some critics to denounce “Son of Saul” as being an exploitive and excessive portrayal of the Holocaust for the sake of entertainment and sensationalism. If by exploitive and excessive one means unflinching and difficult to stomach, then yes, there is legitimacy to these attacks.
But what first-time director Laszlo Nemes has crafted here is not exploitive, but rather an intimate and personal look at the horrific events that occurred behind the bleak walls of Nazi death camps.
The film is set in 1944 in Auschwitz. Saul works as a Sonderkommando, which the film informs us is a prisoner tasked with corralling incoming Jews into the gas chambers and hauling away the dead bodies to be burned in the camp’s crematoriums. Saul and the other Sonderkommandos are forced to carry out these despicable acts against their fellow people only because it means extending their own inevitable death sentences.
“Son of Saul” is beautifully shot almost entirely from the perspective of the titular character. Nemes uses shallow focus that blurs everything behind Saul’s head. The camera rarely pulls away from his face and when it does, it is to offer just a brief glimpse of what his eyes are focused on. Nemes uses this immediacy to bring us as close as possible to death, to hold our heads to the fire until we either look away or begrudgingly accept everything.
Nemes also utilizes the Academy aspect ratio, meaning that the image is compressed into a square with black bars on the side. Thus the film feels intentionally tight, narrow-focused and often claustrophobic, which is employed to nauseating effect during the more intense and chaotic moments.
As a result of these visual techniques, most of the atrocities end up happening in the background: an indistinct, white flash behind Saul’s shoulder is a naked body, dragged fresh from the gas chambers, and a gunshot followed by a blurry poof of red is another Jew executed.
“Son of Saul” is incredibly heavy — I don’t know if I could bear another viewing of it. Yet I was entirely gripped by Saul’s moral obsession to give a proper Jewish burial to a young boy who he convinces himself is his son. This burial mission is Saul’s attempt to somehow redeem his complicity in the genocide and to give his numbered days significance and normality.
The film, somewhat to its detriment, is a sensationalist piece designed more to elicit an emotional response than to offer some profound insight on human wickedness.
But really, how much more is there to contribute to the cultural narrative that shrouds the Holocaust besides monuments of remembrance? The atrocities speak for themselves and by the end leave us numb.
