Son of Saul at the 21st Sarajevo Film Festival SFF

The ultimate punch in my stomach

at the 21st Sarajevo SFF

came from watching “Son of Soul”.

This Hungarian film of a very young team

tells the story of a man,

of whatever remains of him,

in an extermination camp…

So many times stories on this topic were told.

Always in a 'simplistic" style.

According to the sacrosanct imperative of the "do not forget"...

Works that have banalized

the retorics of death

into a show..

...generating copious tears...

..rarely due to deep reflexion...

Nemes makes the choice of a different narrative:

one single deported, Saul,

 and his experience in the brief gap of time before death.

Not just a deported.

But a member of the Sonderkommando,

a group of prisoners that for some small privilege

were undertaking auxiliary roles

in the management of the crematoria.

People living in a hybrid intermediate sphere

between victims and perpetrators

one that Primo Levi called " the gray area".

Saul assists one day to a prodigal episode.

 A teenager, among the piles of gazed bodies,  

is gasping and trying to hang on

to what little breath he has miraculously preserved.

But then he is manually finished by a Nazi doctor.

Saul Ausslander becomes convinced that

it is his son

by a woman

who is not his wife.

That useless, that desperate attempt to survive

seems to revive the prisoner from the state of hypnosis

to which the atrocious routine

had imprinted him.

And it restored in him

a residual capacity

to appreciate and decide.

Saul elaborates a plan.

He needs to steal the corpse

(and it does not matter if he is his son or not ),

to find a rabbi to celebrate the funeral,

and to give him a burial.

He thus begins his absurd run in the feverish Hell of Auschwitz,

even though he endangers his fate

and that of other inmates.

An endless wandering,

with no other conclusion than death.

But for him,

an extreme,  

a stubborn declaration of will,

the implementation of a project,

at the face of the arbitrary.

So this pure mission will become

the only mean to recapture, even partly,

and for the last time,

an identity.

One suppressed by the humiliating rituals of the lager.

There is always something that escapes us,

something creepy,

yet precious.

Something that the blurry concentrated smile of Levente Molnar’s character is almost disclosing…

...But no..

The Hungarian director focuses on Saul,

while convoys of trains of death row inmates

arrive to Auschwitz.

It is obviously a very well run system of extermination.

Its reconstruction is careful and accurate…

...and yet the story is

unsustainable hypnotic…

Was it really the son of Saul,

what is now only a corpse without a name

and without any identification?

The other prisoners often raise the question.

As if a true biological link

could really make this venture

less absurd than it is.

But while we fall deeper and deeper

into that abyss

alongside Saul,

we understand his need

and his urgency.

His determination is the same as the film conveys.

Saul will devote every drop of energy

he is left with,

to his compassionate gesture.

Laszlo Nemes unfolds an obsessive care

to the technical means.

The result is a state of the art in terms of acting,

set design,

cinematography,

editing and sound…

Nemes does not choose a subjective approach.

But he is stalking his character.

He keeps a close up on the neck and, rarely,

on the face of his protagonist.

A 4: 3 tight and suffocating…

...while relegating the concentration camp in an out of focus, 

hazy and indistinct…

...in a hellish world of roars, gasps and groans…

...that compound a creepy and vivid image...

Indeed,

it is precisely on this recursive geography ,

fumigant and labyrinthine

as a Dante's circle,

that develops an unprecedented revival.

At the face of all the aberrant mechanics

of the extermination camps…

Skilled in building large sequence shots,

the director uses expressive key length.

They produce an almost physical resistance in the viewer

(gimmick that betrays the school of Doktor Tarr)…

…and for the dynamism

and the unity of the whole movie,

Nemes intertwines long shots,

centripetal movements

and swirling.

He manages to create a work deeper a

nd more important than its cinematic form:

…a chronicle that is not analytical,

but directly experiential…

… immersive…

… and without mediation…

One that puts the individual

in front of abomination .

The result is not just original,

but shocking and significant.

It is a historical terrible scene,

out of any specific coordinate.

 And that is why it is a piece of work

brutal and necessary.

By Giulia Ghica Dobre

In Sarajevo

At the 21^st SFF "SON OF SOUL" was awarded:
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
SON OF SAUL / SAUL FIA
Hungary
Director: László Nemes
Financial Award, in the amount of 10,000 €, is provided by Agnes B.