Son of Saul

An Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language and scooping all the top awards at Cannes (and many more besides), Son of Saul is not just another concentration camp film. With the camera either placed right in Saul Auslander’s (Rohrig) face or perched on his shoulder, Lázló Nemes’s subjective style ensures one lives through Saul’s moments just as he does.

Hungarian Saul is an Auschwitz Sonderkommando, assisting the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews by herding them off the trains to the gas chambers during the summer of 1944. His pale, tired, hard face tells us he’s been at this for some time and the knowledge that all Sonderkommandos are executed after a short time. However, when he discovers a young boy still breathing in a pile of bodies, he belays the SS doctor's orders to take him for an autopsy. In an attempt to cling on to a last vestige of humanity, Saul hides the body for burial and looks about a Rabbi to say the requisite words. These actions however threaten to derail a planned uprising by the inmates…

The style lends a nightmarish quality to the scenes: the camera is forever tight on Saul but what's happening around him – sometimes just out of shot, other times out of focus – lends the scenes both a real and unreal quality; one mass shooting sequence is reminiscent of the village scene from Come And See - that chaotic, hellish experience. Instead of showing what's happening, Nemes allows the sounds of the camp do the work: the gas chamber door sliding shut, the screams that slowly die away. Nemes sticking to close to Saul throughout is almost a safety instinct – he’s made it this far, best stick with him. Nemes gives proceedings a manic pace; the handheld camera giving the scenes an edge but also allows Nemes to get you to fixate on things like Saul's eyes and how they’ve sunk into his head, or the X on the back of his jacket.

But there can be confusion too. The dialogue is delivered in whispers and with the film told from Saul’s myopic point of view, a man who keeps his head down and his mouth shut, details of the uprising come piecemeal. The reasons for the warnings that Saul receives aren't clear for long stretches.

A visceral experience.