Son of Saul

Rating: 8/10 (23 January 2017)

I set myself a target every year to watch every single film that wins and gets nominated at the Oscars, I had watched the other four nominees in the Foreign Language category, I saved this Hungarian film, the winner, until last. Basically set during the Second World War, Hungarian-Jewish Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig) is a prisoner in the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz, he a member of Sonderkommando, forced under pain of death to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims. Saul and the other members know that the prisoners they are enclosing in showers are going to their deaths, the members' work consists of disinfecting the gas chamber after use, going through victims' personal possessions to find valuable items, and disposing of the ashes after the bodies have been burned. One of these gassings however sees Saul pulling out the body of a boy he is convinced is his son, the Germans want to perform an autopsy on the body, but Saul manages to steal the body and avoid this happening. Saul wants to give his son's corpse a proper Jewish burial, he is looking for a Jewish rabbi to preside over the burial, he tells other worker prisoners what he is doing in the hope that they will assist him. Saul finds out that many of the worker prisoners are trying to smuggle out information about the atrocities of the camp to show the world, in order to begin an uprising against their captors. The other Sonderkommando members see their task as more important, and there are many moments when Saul may get stalled or caught, including in the indoor and outdoor crowds of other prisoners, but then there comes a point when the usefulness of the working prisoners for the captors may be coming to an end. A riot breaks out, S-S guards are attacked and the rebellion starts, Saul and a group of prisoners are able to escape, he carries the body of his boy, but he is forced to let it go in the current of the river. In the end Saul and the prisoners find a shed in the forest, they rest to discuss a plan to join the Polish resistance, Saul notices a young peasant boy outside, they smile at each other, the boy runs away and guards pass him, in the direction of the shed, gunfire echoes through the woods and the boy walks away. Also starring Levente Molnár as Abraham Warszawski, Urs Rechn as Oberkapo Biederman, Jerzy Walczak as Rabbi Frankel, Sándor Zsótér as Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, Marcin Czarnik as Feigenbaum, and twins Gergö and Balázs Farkas as Saul's Son. It has been seventy years since the events of the Holocaust, Life Is Beautiful and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas are examples of films that have successful made a fictional but realistic story using a concentration camp, this film proves that there is still room for a new film about this subject. It is simply watching the life of a working prisoner of Auschwitz over a two day period, but what makes this film really clever is that we only see what the character sees, the shocking exterminations and hundreds of people confined and suffering seen from the point of view of the lead character is much more powerful, it is intense and harrowing, but a respectful and magnificent wartime drama. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, it won the BAFTA for Best Film not in the English Language, and it won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language. Very good!