Son of Saul is groundbreaking, and a near-masterpiece of looking at horror through cinema

Rating: 9/10 (7 February 2016)

One of Martin Scorsese's great axioms is 'Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out'. That came to mind while watching the Cannes Grand Prix winner Son of Saul, which is all about perspective and what the filmmaker chooses to put in to a film but most specifically in the foreground in focus and the background out. It's what is called in cinema-speak 'shallow depth of field' (the opposite, a wide depth of field, can be seen in most shots of Citizen Kane for a counter-example), and in the case of Laszlo Nemes' direction it's a relentless experiment that pays off very well - putting his protagonist, a Sonderkommando (or a Jew put in charge of cleaning up... the bodies, the gas chambers, doing menial tasks, anything), into the focus for pretty much the whole time.
It's the sort of cinematic experiment that in a way reminded me of Birdman - long takes, keeping things going even when it should in all likelihood cut - but where Inarritu was all about keeping up the pace of a shot to get into the space of theater people, this is all about keeping things completely Harrowing and Horrifying. And even when in this Auschwitz concentration camp we don't see (like at the star) Jews being gassed, the horror is still there because we can see it on Saul's face, what he's holding back from letting out about his desperate situation (in a way it makes it more horrifying for the audience; by showing it it might be easier, by not showing it we may imagine it ourselves, or try not to).
What happens with Saul (Geza Rohrig) is that he sees a young boy who has not quite died from the gas, though is put out of his misery minutes later by doctors. He knows this boy, and we soon learn that it's his son... or is it(?) I'll get to this ambiguity in a moment, but firstly the important thing with Saul is his relentless attitude toward the boy's body - first getting it out of the hands of the doctors (who will likely burn it up first chance they get) and then to find a Rabbi to say the Kaddish, the mourner's prayer, over his body before a burial. He won't stop until he can do this, even (unfortunately for some in his group of Sonderkommandos who are plotting an uprising) at the risk of his fellow prisoners.
I wondered after the film ended if it would work in the same way if Nemes and his astonishing cinematographer Mátyás Erdély had performed conventional coverage - shot, reverse shot, wide shots, close-ups, etc. To be fair there are a few moments where it moves from a shot looking at Saul or from his point of view and looks to see what he sees, though these moments are packed with significance. But I think that is in large part what makes this experience so unique and one of the must-sees of the past year; it's one thing that this actor Rohrig conveys so much with this character, with his desperation and focus and drive, almost to obsessive degrees of checking every other Jew to see if they are Rabbis; it's one thing that we're seeing all of these monstrous acts (whether it's the bodies being moved around, the ashes being shoveled, the Nazi doctors bullying Saul at a crucial moment). But it all comes down to presentation: how we see this horror is what sets it apart the most, in conjunction with everything else. We know what is in the frame and what is just a little off-center, but we don't forget that it's there, and that is like a constant kick in the gut.
I want to say the movie is probably great, but it just misses the mark of being in my top 10 of the year because of something that happens near the end of the story, or in the last act, with motivation (if such a story as this, which unfolds like a nightmare documentary of atrocities and behind-closed-doors hush-conversations). I can see why the filmmakers might want to try to make it unclear if the boy is or isn't his son, or to even make the metaphor that Saul is trying to save ALL of the children, but in the scope of such an incredibly grim, brutal, whatever-word-you-want-to-put-it it doesn't feel quite right. It may for some, and I don't want to take that way from anyone's experience, but just the very end didn't quite work for me on that ambiguous is-it-or-isn't-it level.
But as a work of art this is one for the ages, and even more remarkably that a first-time feature director sustained the intensity and point of view for the full 107 minutes and didn't make it feel like it wasn't earned or didn't fit the material. It's a truly unique work, even as I'm not sure I can visit it again very soon for the simple reason that it does its job almost TOO well, akin to United 93 or the Russian film Come & See, also about truly unspeakable acts filmed in such a way that 'you can NOT look away, even though you wish you could.' 9.5/10