If I could find one flaw in the presentation of SaulвЂ™s isolation, itвЂ™s the use of subtitles. The monstrosities around us begin to blur as we move forward, too focused on the task at hand to let our mind linger and too fearful to appreciate any additional second spent alive. Our heads are kept low and our eyes study the content of the walls. Kept out of focus and sequestered off into the back of his mind, Saul has to tune out these horrors if he is to function and survive within the barbed wire.ДЄ deep, overwhelming suffocation takes hold of the audience and Nemes accomplishes the impossible: he grants us at least some inkling of how it feels to be a prisoner of a concentration camp. We do not revel in the carnage, we shrink away with terror and nausea. The camera does not linger on the staggering piles of corpses. We understand the horror that surrounds Saul, yet never for a moment does it feel exploitative. ItвЂ™s a superb example of how master filmmaking can reflect a characterвЂ™s mindset.ДЄll sense of space and environment is cut off and a heavy sense of claustrophobia sets in.

For the movieвЂ™s entirety, except for the devastating final shot, Nemes places his camera over SaulвЂ™s shoulder and follows him through his day-to-day activities in Auschwitz. On a sheer technical level, the filmвЂ™s style of cinematography is both excellent and unprecedented. In the eye of a maelstrom, he pursues at least some semblance of sanctuary. He seeks to find a rabbi to perform a proper Jewish burial. Saul becomes convinced that this boy is his son after he is ordered to throw the body into the furnace along with the others. With his body desecrated by Zyklon B, any faint glimmer of hope gets snuffed out as a Nazi doctor suffocates the last trace of life from him. Treated like cattle, Sonderkommandos are turned against their people under the dim promise of survival, a hope that proves futile, as they are disposed of as soon as they outlive their usefulness.ДЄfter another average day at work (as average as being a tool for genocide gets, I suppose), Saul (GГ©za RГ¶hrig) finds a boy gasping for air as he cleans the chambers. His вЂњjobвЂќ вЂ“ one that would result in a swift execution had he refused вЂ“ forces him to dispose of the bodies of prisoners after they had been gassed to death. The titular Saul, a Hungarian Jew, acts as a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. вЂњSon of Saul,вЂќ in its uncompromising cruelty and hopelessness, exists to remind us of the barbarity of humanity and how we should ensure that such evil will never again walk this earth.ДЇrom its opening sequence, вЂњSon of SaulвЂќ makes it clear it has no intentions to sugarcoat history.

Viewers too easily grow complacent with the hideous atrocities and dehumanization from the past and present. In his first feature as director, LГЎszlГі Nemes throws the audience directly into the headspace of one the HolocaustвЂ™s many millions of victims and forces them to behold its unremitting horror head on. вЂњSon of SaulвЂќ may be one of the most brutal films in recent memory.

Son of saul film