‘Son of Saul’ review: László Nemes proves there are still Holocaust stories left to tell

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The Holocaust has been the subject of so many films that it is a genre unto itself. But most of these films are based on true stories. Son of Saul (Saul Fia), the debut feature film from Hungarian director László Nemes, proves that fictional stories set during the Holocaust can be just as powerful.

In 1944, Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig) is a member of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz. This group of Jews is sent to clean up the gas chambers after they are used to kill dozens of Jews at once. One day, Saul sees the body of a young boy, who he soon decides to call his son. Before an autopsy can be performed, Saul tries to smuggle the body out to have it properly buried. He then searches for a rabbi to say the proper blessings, but his quest to honor one member of the dead puts those living in constant danger.

That is the main question of the film. What is worth sacrificing the living for? Saul might tell one of his fellow prisoners that, “We’re already dead,” but for some, there are reasons to try to survive a concentration camp. At once, Saul’s quest is selfish and selfless. On one hand, he is jumping through hoops to get this boy buried, even if the Nazis catch him. But he’s also trying to give the boy some dignity, which had been robbed from so many Jews.

Son of Saul shows the horrors of the Holocaust like no other film because Nemes puts the audience right in the middle of it. Much of the film is shot behind Saul’s back, so we experience the horrors just as he does. We feel him becoming anxious or tense as people are gunned down around him, or thrown into pits or shot while trying to swim away.

The cinematography by Mátyás Erdély captures how Saul might see what unfolds before him. And when the camera is on him, the close-ups reveal an intense face. Géza Röhrig has a face with a maze of wrinkles, cuts, scars and bruises that show a complicated character. The actor shows a skill that carries the entire film, so much so that you wouldn’t mind if the entire film was told just through close-ups of him.

Nemes has requested that the film be shown only on 35mm and in the square 1.37:1 aspect ratio. This provides a claustrophobic feel and also gives the extra power to the close-ups. By screening the film on actual film, Son of Saul looks like it could have been shot in the 1940s. It’s color palette is muted and dingy, because trying to show beauty here would distract from the story.

The director’s use of sound is also key to understanding the film. Since Saul himself often takes up much of the frame, we must pay attention to the sounds to understand what’s going on and what he sees.

While Son of Saul does take place in Auschwitz during the Holocaust, it is not a Holocaust movie. The film doesn’t touch on why the Nazis persecuted Jews. It is a human drama, centered on difficult moral decisions. Saul must decide if the cost of dignity for one little boy he never knew is worth sacrificing the safety of men he does know. He even comes close to sacrificing himself, as his obsession with finding a rabbi to say the proper blessings becomes dangerous and nearly puts himself at the wrong end of a rifle.

Son of Saul is naturally a dreary film, but it’s not without a bit of hope that the dead will find their dignity in time. It doesn’t come until after Saul’s quest, but it proves that he wasn’t the only one who fought for the memory of the deceased.

Son of Saul is being released by Sony Pictures Classics in the U.S. on Dec. 18 and is the film Hungary has chosen to submit for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It was reviewed at the Savannah Film Festival, presented by the Savannah College of Art and Design.