Saul fia (Son of Saul)
2015
*****
Director: László Nemes
Cast: Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn, Todd Charmont, Sándor Zsótér, Amitai Kedar, Uwe Lauer, Christian Harting, Jerzy Walczak, Marcin Czarnik, Levente Orbán, Attila Fritz
Saul Ausländer is a Sonderkommando, a prisoner who is forced to work at the gas chambers. One day in 1944 when the Auschwitz prisoners are preparing an uprising, Saul sees a dead boy he believes to be his son, and begins a desperate scramble to find a rabbi to give the boy a proper burial. László Nemes' directorial debut is a stunningly assured and original drama about Holocaust. This is one subject matter that is too horrific to imagine, let alone show on screen. Even great films like Fateless and Schindler's List have moments when the entire endeavour begins to feel exploitative or just plain wrong. Nemes' masterplan is to give a subjective view to the horrors. The tight 4:3 frame is mostly focused on Saul's expressionless face, with the atrocities out of focus or out of frame, as the protagonist goes through various layers of hell with the help of astonishing sound design. An Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film.
