As you can imagine, being the film geek that I am I love to talk to people about movies. Certain topics are particularly interesting to me, and one of those is the reasons for why someone does or does not like a certain movie. I guess that’s basically just film criticism in a nutshell, but I find it fascinating to see which specific details and elements of a movie made up of many details and elements were important enough to leave a certain impression. Generally, most people tend to either generally like or generally dislike a particular film. But occasionally there will be a film that has just one specific detail or elements that colors one’s perception of the entire film. Such it is with Son of Saul.
Son of Saul (Hungarian: Saul Fia) is about a man named Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig), a Hungarian Jew trapped in a Nazi concentration camp. He and a number of other prisoners work as sonderkommandos- prisoners forced to clean the gas chambers and to dispose of the bodies. One day while cleaning the chambers, Saul finds a boy who miraculously survived the gas, although he is quickly killed by the guards. But rather than be immediately burned like the others, the boy’s body is stored for later study. Saul gets the idea to give the boy a proper burial, usually an impossibility in his environment. In order to do so, Saul will need to steal the body from the medical labs and find a rabbi to conduct the last rights. Meanwhile, Saul’s workmates, cognizant of their impending execution, plot to escape from the camp.
Son of Saul (Hungarian: Saul Fia) is about a man named Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig), a Hungarian Jew trapped in a Nazi concentration camp. He and a number of other prisoners work as sonderkommandos- prisoners forced to clean the gas chambers and to dispose of the bodies. One day while cleaning the chambers, Saul finds a boy who miraculously survived the gas, although he is quickly killed by the guards. But rather than be immediately burned like the others, the boy’s body is stored for later study. Saul gets the idea to give the boy a proper burial, usually an impossibility in his environment. In order to do so, Saul will need to steal the body from the medical labs and find a rabbi to conduct the last rights. Meanwhile, Saul’s workmates, cognizant of their impending execution, plot to escape from the camp.
And yes, the entire film looks like this.
Like I said earlier, there is one single element of this film which overshadows everything else about it, and surprisingly it’s not the fact that it’s a Holocaust film. Rather, it’s the cinematography- nearly the entire film in shot in ultra close-ups of Saul’s face. The camera always follows him, and the background is nearly always out-of-focus. The one benefit to this film style is that it in a way enhances the horror of Saul’s surroundings- seeing the atrocities of a death camp only from the corners of your eyes, so to speak, knowing what’s happening but never getting a clear look at it very disturbing. However, this is outweighed by the fact that the style of the film quickly becomes extremely distracting, not to mention hard to watch. Honestly, my eyes just got tired after staring at it for so long. I was never aware of exactly how much of staring at a screen on the wall watching a movie entails until I watched this movie. Plus, it seemed like the filmmakers put a lot of work and effort into the sets and other elements off the background from what little I saw of it, but I’ll never really know because I never saw any of it clearly.
Röhrig’s acting is quite good, which is a relief because otherwise the film would have been impossible to watch, but to be honest the cinematography of the film is so central and overbearing that it really drowns out every other aspect of it. It may very well be a ‘love it or hate it’ type film, because it won the Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. But what it came down to for me was that it was interesting to watch for about 10 minutes and incredibly distracting and tiring to watch for the other 95. It was certainly a unique experience, but honestly I never want to see another film shot like that ever again.
Grade: C-
Röhrig’s acting is quite good, which is a relief because otherwise the film would have been impossible to watch, but to be honest the cinematography of the film is so central and overbearing that it really drowns out every other aspect of it. It may very well be a ‘love it or hate it’ type film, because it won the Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. But what it came down to for me was that it was interesting to watch for about 10 minutes and incredibly distracting and tiring to watch for the other 95. It was certainly a unique experience, but honestly I never want to see another film shot like that ever again.
Grade: C-
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