Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
In the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival trying to save from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son, seeking to give him a proper Jewish burial.
Son of Saul is a formally audacious Holocaust film that places the viewer in suffocating proximity to its protagonist through relentless close-up cinematography and a deliberately narrow aspect ratio, creating an immersive and harrowing experiential portrait of Auschwitz rarely attempted in cinema. László Nemes's directorial debut is strikingly original in conception — keeping the atrocities largely out of focus in the background while foregrounding one man's desperate, perhaps delusional act of spiritual defiance. Géza Röhrig's central performance is exceptional: near-wordless, physically inhabited, and emotionally devastating. The plot is slender by design, functioning more as a moral and sensory ordeal than a conventional narrative, which limits its score but not its impact. The ending is ambiguous and quietly shattering, though some viewers find it abrupt. Overall a genuinely singular work in war cinema.