His teenage son, Blake (Gage Munroe, The Shack), is disappointed in him and his wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen, Wonder Woman), seems to pull only further away. When two thieves break into his suburban home one night, Hutch declines to defend himself or his family, hoping to prevent serious violence. Note: At Harkins Camelview at Fashion Square.Sometimes the man you don’t notice is the most dangerous of all.Įmmy winner Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul, The Post, Nebraska) stars as Hutch Mansell, an underestimated and overlooked dad and husband, taking life’s indignities on the chin and never pushing back. Rating: R for disturbing content and some graphic nudity. 'Son of Saul'4.5 starsĬast: Geza Rohrig, Levente Molnar, Urs Rechn. In Hungarian, Yiddish, German and Polish, with subtitles. And it is a singular vision, one that demands to be shared. "Son of Saul" offers Nemes' harrowing vision of the possibility of peace, at least within oneself. You find hope wherever you can when you think you have run out of places to look for it. All of these storylines will come together by the time the film ends, not perfectly but with power. There is also an uprising brewing among the prisoners, but Saul is now distracted. He will become Saul's obsession, for reasons that have to do with truth and the stories we tell ourselves, with rituals that provide perhaps one last tenuous link to life as it was lived before.
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A boy miraculously survives the gas, at least for a time. For Saul, it is a mechanism for survival, if not sanity.īut this is not just an exercise in cinematography. Having systematic murder play out along the margins makes it no less disturbing. In the aftermath, the focus remains on Saul, as he and the other workers drag and stack bodies. It's as if he has developed an internal mute button to block out the reality of what is happening - what he is facilitating. We are in Saul's head, experiencing what he does. The screams, the pounding on the walls and doors, play as horrific background noise. Instead, we are drawn to Saul's impassive expression, which is almost a relief. As men and women are herded into the showers, we see them along the margins of the frame. We know better, of course, and eventually, so do they.īut the focus remains steadfastly on Saul, with the camera either framing his face or following along just behind him. We see Saul in close-up, as we will for much of the film, stoically leading men and women into a room, where they are told to strip down and clean up in the showers, then get something to eat. The stunning long, opening tracking shot lets us know what Nemes is up to. What makes "Son of Saul" so unique, though, in addition to showing us the grisly day-to-day business of death camps, is the way he and cinematographer Matyas Erdely shot the film: The focus is almost entirely on Saul. Nemes, who also co-wrote the film, based it in part on secret writings members of the Sonderkommando hid.
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It is soul-shattering work, though one wonders if any soul at all remains after doing it for a while. At times, there are so many dead bodies the incinerators cannot accommodate all of them. After that, they drag the bodies of the victims - called "pieces" by the Nazi guards - to incinerators or, when they begin to overflow, to trenches. Saul (Géza Röhrig in a brilliant, haunting performance) is a Sonderkommando - a prisoner whose life is temporarily extended by the forced labor of leading other prisoners to their deaths in the showers, then searching their belongings for hidden gold, jewels or other "shiny" valuables.
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The film is set in a German death camp, most likely in the closing stages of World War II. These questions and more are at the heart of "Son of Saul," László Nemes' shattering, inventively staged debut feature, a Holocaust drama like you have never seen before. Faced with inhuman horror, suffering through life with a termination date all but stamped on your forehead while unimaginable suffering goes on around you - at what point does literal truth cease to be important? What lies must we tell ourselves to maintain even a semblance of sanity?