Son of Saul

You can watch a lot of films about Holocaust, but this one is truly outstanding. I experienced a genuine compassion to Saul while watching. Author managed to make us feel all the cruelty of war times.

Impressive movie about concentration camp with realist setting , top-notch acting and evocative cinematography in 35 mm . The film was met with wide critical acclaim after its world premiere and has subsequently been submitted as Hungary's official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards . This excellent movie deals with the horror of 1944 in Auschwitz , the infamous extermination center , capturing an insightful portrait of hell and the spiritual experience and focusing the story of a man wanting to bury his assumed son . Thus , when the incoming transports , mostly Jews , SS soldiers made instant decisions , those who were fit to labors were sent into the camp , others including the children , were dispatched immediately to the gas chambers where approximately one-quarter million Jews were executed . There a prisoner , a ¨Sonderkommando¨ is forced to burn the corpses of his own people , then he finds moral survival upon attempting to save from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son , and he subsequently looks for a Jewish Rabí . At the end takes place a rebellion and a breathtaking , exciting getaway .

This terrible picture is well set in Auschwitz , it was a painful extermination camp of killing of Jews including children . We see horrors , murders , massacres against the prisoners but from a particular sight point , the starring : Geza Rohrig , who gives a very good acting with his subjective vision . Along with Geza , there appears a lot of fine but unknown Hungarian actors such as Levente Monar, Urs Rechn, Tood Charmont, Sándor Zsotér, Marcin Czarnik, and Jerzy Walczak , all of them display magnificent performances ; including their realistic mélange of Hungarian, German and Yiddish dialogue . Atmospheric cinematography by Mátyás Erdély , the outside scenes were shot only with natural light , it is fully aware of the quality of light , relying on natural light for outdoors . This Hungarian Cannes prize-winner that won a Golden Globe in the "Best Foreign Language Film" category in 2016 and critically heralded Holocaust film began what is likely to be a multi-month run , calibrated in hopes of winning the Foreign Language Academy Award as well as to maximize grossing potent . It is a dark and serious flick , a splendid movie about the brutal existence at concentration camp and subsequent breakout from horrible place . The picture is based on real events , as Auschwitz along with Sobibór , Chelmno , Belzec and Treblinka were five large death camps in the Lublin district of Poland transformed into extermination centers to implement the policy of genocide thought at the Wannsee Conference . All the concentration camps were under the command of SS Odilo Globocnick . There was some minor industrial activity linked to the war effort but the main work was the execution of inmates . Victims were brought to the camp in unventilated transports , and all but a handful were gassed after arrival , the gas chambers could accommodate hundred prisoners at one time , most of their corpses were burned in open pits .

Filmmaker Laszlo Nemes , his debut feature , avoids both , melodrama and violence , giving a thought-provoking as well as intense description about the hard existence in Auschwitz . Director László Nemes stated on cinematic inspirations : ¨Come and see¨ (1985) by Elem Klimov was a great source of inspiration for me ; however the film bears remarkable resemblance to ¨The grey zone¨ (201) by Tim Blake Nelson . Nemes took testimony from present witnesses , he made a real investigation labour and had particular help of prestigious historians as Gideon Grief , Philippe Mesnard and Zoltan Vagi . Nemes wanted to convey something that goes against the perception through films, that it is a mixture of organisation and chaos . Lazsló called Nobel prize-winning Hungarian writer and concentration camp survivor Imre Kertész an inspiration to make this film . He took records from known documentary ¨Shoa¨ by Claudie Lanzmann , especially the actual testimony from Abraham Bomba , as well as of the ¨Memorial of Shoa¨ , with a book titled ¨Voices under the ashes¨ also titled ¨The writings of Auschwitz¨ .

This movie is not taken on lightly as an audience member.

To classify it as 'entertainment' would certainly be wrong because the subject matter is so uncompromisingly challenging.

I wanted to love it unreservedly for the bravery of its content but I'm afraid I was left a little cold.

The film is shot in square format (possibly 4:3) which is immediately disarming and unusual (the last time I saw this was in the very different Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel) and it's used effectively because it gives the viewer a voyeuristic look into the mayhem that is Dachau where the movie is set. It also helps the director from a budgetary point of view because it eschews the need for expensive wide shots.

The opening scenes are astonishingly harrowing as we see the "pieces" of Jewish bodies essentially processed through the factory of death with disturbing, off screen, dog barks, German soldier orders and mechanical noise. It's brutal and affecting in the extreme.

In some ways this is what I grotesquely wanted from the movie. I wanted to be horrified like no horror movie could achieve.

Forgive me for this but it didn't happen. Yes, the mood was grotesque thanks, in particular, to the extraordinary sound design, but on screen I felt it shirked its potential too much.

In the end this voyeuristic cinematography ultimately becomes both tiresome and limiting.

The fundamental weakness of the movie, in my opinion, is in the storyline. Frankly it's not that credible and doesn't stack up. The main protagonist (Saul) discovers his (illegitimate?) son as a gas chamber survivor and smuggles him out of the situation to seek a Rabbi to give him a proper Jewish burial.

This leads to a sequence of events that side stories with an undercover camp breakout in which he is also inexplicably involved.

Sorry, it's not credible.

And Géza Röhrig as the lead didn't really do it for me. And so the early wonderment of the movie, it really is very moving, starts to erode and gradually descends into incredibility.

I love what this movie stands for. I respect every iota of it.

I just didn't think it was particularly good overall.

I do not understand how the previous commentators were able to add their opinion, since I saw the very first screening of the movie outside Cannes in the Művész arts cinema of Budapest tonight, on May 29, 2015.

The movie was followed by a discussion and Q&A session with the artists.

Director Nemes aimed to create a movie that is deprived of the post-war artifacts present in most Holocaust movies.

For this goal, he and his staff made substantial historical research to make the smallest details truthful. The shooting took place from less than $2 million, in a very short period (28 days). French, Israeli and German investors did not give money for the movie for fear of a loss.

As the director mentioned, a movie of this length is spliced together form 300 to 700 cuts these days. Theirs required only 80. You are in the camp, you are Saul Auslander. There is utter confusion, you do not know what awaits you in the next second. This is a reality movie with no happy ending that shakes you.

The unimaginable terror of a death camp, where you've become desensitised to the everyday slaughter and murder of herded souls to keep your sanity until a pause, as the machine fails its evil mandate and expels an innocence for manual extermination, and you're connection to a flame that died some time ago is relit, rekindled, reawakened, with perspectives reset and clarity restored, the overwhelming passion and desire to do what's right in the face of everything that's wrong, in the knowledge that it may be the last righteous thing you may ever do, or indeed anyone may ever do as far as you know in this world gone mad.

Outstanding performances, cinematography and direction in a story that will break your soul.