The Haunting Portrait of a Man

Rating: 10/10 (1 April 2016)

Son of Saul is a movie that has peaked my interest ever since it won the Grand Prix at Cannes Film Festival. It also got me more excited to watch it after its wins for Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes, Spirit Awards and the Oscars. After watching Son of Saul I was emotionally drained. Son of Saul captivates with its depiction of the human spirit struggling to keep itself alive in the most darkest moments in history. Son of Saul is one of the greatest achievements in cinema with how it is able to make a cinematic experience of one of the most disturbing times in history.
Son of Saul follows Hungarian Jew concentration camp prisoner Saul in Auschwitz who is part of a separate section of the camp that's forced to corral other prisoners into gas chambers and burn the bodies afterwards. Saul finds the body of a boy who may or may not be his son and he goes throughout the entire movie to find a rabbi to give the boy a proper burial. What I loved about this movie is that they don't go out of their way to show a horrible gross out scene with people burning. I've heard some people criticize this film by saying it shied away from showing the horrors of the Holocaust when in fact the reason they keep this stuff in the literal background is because that's not the main focus. I'll get more into that with cinematography but I really liked how instead of saying, "The Holocaust was a bad thing and here's why." it was focusing more on the story it was telling and I love this movie more for doing that.
The acting and performances in this film are spectacular. Everyone was great in this film and actually felt like they are in the Holocaust. The standout is Géza Röhrig. He brings a powerful performance as Saul and has the best performance of last year. There are shots in this movie that stay for a long while on his face and just by his face and body language we can tell so much about him. Saul is a broken man in a broken world. He's trying to recover what little of his spirit he still has and Röhrig portrays that phenomenally.
But what really shines is László Nemes' direction. A pet peeve I have with movies is when people have a conversation with someone in a loud crowd and you're able to hear every single word clearly. While you can understand what they're saying you can hear the conversations happening around them. I applaud Nemes for being that detail oriented when directing this film.
The cinematography is stellar. It's framing is done extremely well and really goes up close and personal with our main character. The unique thing about the cinematography is that everything around Saul is out of focus so that we can solely concentrate on what Saul is feeling. When I was talking about why people criticized the framing and shying away from showing the horrors of the Holocaust the cinematography really gives away why that is. Since it's all in the perspective of Saul it shows how hard Saul is trying to ignore the horrors that are happening around him. Wouldn't you be doing the same thing if you had Saul's job? The point of this is to not show the whole experience of the Holocaust but one man's experience as he tries to bury a little boy who may or may not be his son.
Son of Saul captures the human spirit at its most vulnerable in a new way that other films should look at and marvel. By far one of the crowning achievements of 2015 that helps cement that year as one of the best years in film history. One of the most important films to view and required viewing for all. Son of Saul amazes at every frame to show the triumph of the human spirit.