Fri. February 5, 2016
By Gregg Shapiro
Nominated for an Academy Award (and favored to win) in the Best Foreign Language Film category (and already a Golden Globe Award-winner), the brutal and relentlessly bleak Hungarian film Son Of Saul (Samuel Goldwyn Classics), set in Auschwitz in 1944, is definitely not for the faint of heart. Just when you thought you may have heard every possible depressing Holocaust story configuration, along comes this grim story about one man's mission to give a boy a proper burial.
The titular Saul (Géza Röhrig), a Hungarian Jew detached from the horrors of his morbid job as one of the sonderkommandos (Jewish concentration camp prisoners tasked with disposing of corpses following their demise in the gas chambers), finds a new purpose in life. A boy is discovered barely still breathing among the dead bodies in the "showers." A Nazi doctor is summoned to the scene and after declaring the event a rarity smothers the boy and orders an autopsy.
Saul witnesses it all and takes it upon himself to hide the boy's body while searching for a rabbi to perform a makeshift funeral. Even though he is childless, Saul calls the dead boy his son as if to give his task a greater purpose. However, the other sonderkommandos have a different plan for Saul. They need him to assist in what will turn out to be an ill-fated uprising.
Saul's quest is agonizing. Watching him traverse the camp, dragging bodies to the ovens, shoveling ash into a lake, sorting and collecting the belongings of the dead, ushering people to their death, is excruciating. Particularly since his deadened emotions have returned as he attempts to complete this meaningful act.
When all is said and done Son of Saul is an impressive feature-length debut by director and co-writer László Nemes. Röhrig's portrayal of Saul is indelible, the kind that remains with you long after the credits have rolled. Son of Saul is now playing in theaters.
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