"Son of Saul is a fiction in many respects, but the fiction
is the truth." – Claude Lanzmann
Saul Auslander has been reduced to a drone, a Sonderkammando
who has become the hand of the Nazi killing machine, bled of his empathy,
compassion… and hope. But does he still
retain his humanity?
Director Laszlo Nemes has crafted a masterpiece by pulling
focus so tightly that we experience almost everything solely from one limited
perspective which eschews all Holocaust tropes.
Nemes and his DP Matyas Erdely set the frame limits at Academy ratio
1:37:1 and forbid any establishing shots. There are very few medium long shots
and when the camera pans left or right it quickly focuses once again upon
Saul’s visage. The depth of field is so limited that we never quite focus upon
obviously horrific events. Nemes refuses to exploit the Holocaust: there are no
lingering close-ups of piles of bodies, overt crying and wailing victims or
murdered children in red jackets. All of these things (sans red jacket) exist
in this film but are rendered as routine and peripheral.
Nemes like his protégé Bela Tarr utilizes extreme long takes
and a roving camera often following his protagonist from behind while walking
or running. Erdely masterly frames everything in close-up to medium close-up
even while Saul is in motion. And the entire film is in motion as Saul
constantly moves and works, unable to stop for fear of being singled out for
execution. As powerful as the imagery is (even the images we tangentially
perceive) it’s the sound design that is the building block of the realism.
Dozens of disparate languages and dialects haunt the film often without a
visual source. Or the chugging of arriving trains or the ventilation system of
the crematorium as it pumps out the fatal pesticide. Neither the crack of
gunfire nor the rumbles of explosions are exaggerated and even the awful scene
of flamethrowers burning victims alive has a subdued brittle realism. This is
an anti-Hollywood film. This is an anti-SCHINDLER’S LIST film.
The film opens out-of-focus until a character (who we learn
is our protagonist) walks towards the camera and stops in close-up. Without an
establishing shot it’s chaotic and confusing and difficult to tell what is
happening. This becomes the structure for the entire movie. But we soon
understand that Saul is shepherding a new trainload of Jews to the crematorium.
As he helps these confused victims undress and neatly hang up their clothes and
organize their belongings, we begin to directly experience the cruelly
efficient Nazi killing apparatus: most victims believe this to be a shower and
are encouraged that they will come back out to retrieve their belongings. When
the crematorium door is closed and the generators thump to life we don’t hear
as much as feel the bulk of the dying victims crushing one another, pushing
towards the door, climbing upon each other in a gruesome frenzy to survive. We
only see Saul’s blank expression as he stands by the door waiting to pull out
the corpses and load them onto the elevators towards the ovens. And here is the
vilest evil of the Holocaust: in making the victims complicit in their own
destruction.
Nemes refuse to condemn or judge Saul or any other
Sonderkammando; he is only depicting the acts. He is humanizing the Jews in
these “Special Units” without making any excuse for their behavior or allowing
melodrama to intrude for an emotional reconciliation. Saul remains quite
impassive and difficult to read. Nemes underscores this at the very beginning
of the film (even before the opening shot) when the text states that the word
Sonderkammando is a German word. This divorces their title from Jewish
authority: that is, they are labelled by the Nazis and have become what they
have been forced to do.
The plot of the film is beside the point. Saul discovers a
boy who briefly survived the Zyklon B before being murdered by Joseph Mengele
(who is never explicitly named). He believes that this dead boy is his son. He
is driven by the need to bury this boy with a Jewish ceremony and keep it from
the ovens. We wonder if it is indeed his son as other prisoners dispute this
telling Saul he never had children. In the face of this seemingly unending
tragedy we also become curious as to why this one act is so important to him.
Saul’s search for a Rabbi drives the narrative but these motivations are not
the focus of the film: Nemes wants us to see how this film is about the Holocaust not what happens (because we know what happens as we know what Saul’s
fate must ultimately be). Nemes creates tension about a potential revolt and the
need of a smuggled package but our expectations are once again subverted.
Saul is among a group of prisoners who escape the camp but
are tracked down to a decaying barn in the middle of a forest. The group-speak
promises to join the Polish Resistance and continue the fight against the Nazi
tyranny but Saul is focused upon one thing: the ghostly child tentatively
framed in the doorway. And in a striking departure the narrative exits Saul’s perspective
and we follow the child running through the woods until he’s grabbed by German
soldiers. Pushed aside, the child runs through the thick woods as gunshots echo
in the distance. Saul has met his death with a sublime smile, his humanity
somehow intact.
Final Grade: (A+)
