Son of Saul

SON OF SAUL (SAUL FIA) (15)

D: Laszlo Nemes

Mozinet / Laokoon (Gabor Sipos & Gabor Rajna)

Hungary 🇭🇺 2015

107 mins

Drama/War

W: Laszlo Nemes & Clara Royer

DP: Matyas Erdely

Ed: Matthieu Taponier

Mus: Laszlo Melis

Géza Röhrig (Saul Ausländer), Levente Molnär (Abraham Warszawski), Urs Rechn (Biederman), Sändor Zsötër (Dr. Miklos Nyiszli)

This concentration camp drama follows a day in the life of Saul Ausländer, a member of the Sonderkommando works unit at Auschwitz.  Knowing his days are numbered, he joins a group who plan to use a camera found amongst the dead and smuggle some pictures to the outside world to raise attention to what is happening within the prison camps walls.

Any film that deals with this sort of subject matter is going to be a challenging watch, but director Laszlo Nemes has a unique approach to the material, with the camera mostly on lead actor Géza Röhrig’s facial expressions as the atrocities happen out of focus around him.  It helps to have an excellent actor to allow this and Röhrig’s superb performance truly makes this harrowing and brutal film a far more digestible viewing experience.

7/10