Man and animal

Rating: 9/10 (26 January 2020)

How can you live with a death sentence hanging over your head, and when any course of positive act is only liken to hasten its execution. Saul, the eponomymous protagonist of Laszlo Nemeth's holocaust movie, responds by trying everything to bury a dead child who may not even be his actual son in accordance with the tradtion of his people, even if that means, as someone accuses him, "betraying the living for the dead". It's possible to think of Saul (brilliantly played by Geza Rohrig) as insane; but in a world where no-one has a real grasp on living, perhaps it's not so crazy to use your final moments to fashion a narrative that makes some kind of internal sense. Whereas many films about the holocaust (like 'Schindler's List', for example) tell the story obliquely, 'Son of Saul' is set fully in the horror of the death camps, which are portrayed as a hideous combination of '24' (i.e. with continual action and terror) and Hieronymous Bosch. Instinctively, one feels that (most days, at least) the life (and death) camps cannot have been so chaotically wild, if only to preserve the sanity of the guards; but instinctively also one cannot comprehend the murder of as many as six million. As with many films on this subject, what it really brings home is the fine dividing line between animal and the social construct of man.