Son of Saul

I quite enjoyed the inner conflict of the main character in the first half because I actually experienced it too. I wondered for a long time if it was rational to devote my energy to a dead child in such moving circumstances ("because of the dead you forgot about the living"), only to realize later that the central character often really doesn't give a damn about any rationality. Son of Saul is an extremely intimate portrait of a broken man for whom the self-destructive and quite obviously irrational (given the situation) need for a ritualistic act becomes the only life purpose. The extremely evocative POV cinematography and (thankfully) mostly out-of-focus shots of human carnage are quite disturbing, and the atmosphere of pervasive evil and death radiates from the screen in a way that's not pretty. [80%] (11/29/2020)

A very authentical portrayal of the hell of a concentration camp that focuses on the Sonderkommando, auxiliary Jews who send other Jews to the gas chambers and also to the ovens. What annoyed me was the main character, as the camera took close-ups of his face quite often and he wasn't a very pretty sight to look at, which might still be passable if he didn't also annoy me with his behaviour, as he spends the whole film looking for a rabbi and wanting to bury his son, and that didn't sit right with me as the central plot. If the film had focused more on the riot or shown footage of the gas chambers or the ovens, it could have been a competition to A Serbian Film. Still, this is a disturbing film from a horrific setting and I don't envy anyone who had to endure it. The unconventional cinematography is interesting. Decent, but I could imagine it being better.70% (09/11/2018)

The European film event of the year, which after months of anticipation, and also due to its immediate status as a unique auteur work, left me with slightly mixed impressions. Formally, it's undoubtedly very impressive; the intimacy of the camera, which could be described as documentary-like, focusing on the immediate circle of the surrounding chaotic hell, the absence of music or any upbeat sounds, and finally the "stripped down" performance of the silent protagonist bring to the world of film a hitherto untamed, visually deliberately austere but overwhelmingly naturalistic view of the Nazi murder machine, so different from many Hollywood melodramas. The opening minutes will bring to their knees anyone capable of the least empathy. Unfortunately, the film lasts 107 minutes, during which it retains all of its exceptional character traits, but the script is not always enough to fully meet such high stylistic and ideological ambitions, and the subplots about the revolt and the actual running of Auschwitz somehow seep through the main thematic line in an indifferent, inconsistent and confusing way (which may be considered intentional, but I simply grew tired of this approach after the opening minutes). That said, the feeling of hopelessness and suffering is omnipresent and at least in this respect Son of Saul also fulfils its mission to perfection. 75% (04/07/2016)

The wiping of vomit and blood and the removal of fresh corpses from the just-used gas chamber, the precisely organized loading of those corpses into furnaces, the constant dumping of ashes into the river; people reduced to mere numerical units, "pieces", worthless waste – killing as a manufacturing process. Killing as a perfectly lubricated and thought-out machine, whose puppets and operators in one – sonderkommando – have prolonged their lives by at least a few months, and who carry the corpses with complacency, without emotions and emotional outpourings (what else is left for them), as if they were operating a machine tool. And in that darkness of inhumanity and filth, like a faint glimmer of humanity, there’s the desire of one of the sonderkommando to bury – as civilized society should – one dead boy. A film that everyone should watch. Especially the fucked up Nazi dumbasses, who I'm under no illusions would be moved, but if even just one in a thousand said to themselves "God, what an asshole I am!", this movie would make sense. Only an idiot can "get bored" or "fall asleep", as I have read here a few times, with this overwhelming experience. (02/29/2016)

(BE2CAN, Lucerna) I’m doubting between four, in recognition for its merits, and three for the experience. After all the hype from Cannes I was expecting more. It’s a different take on the monstrous machinery of the Holocaust from the point of view of a poor bastard who gets mixed up in it. The intention is clear, the execution is undoubtedly appropriate, but I’m not sure it’s enough for me in 107 minutes… (10/10/2015)