This review originally appeared on Movie Mezzanine, for whom I covered Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX.
László Nemes’ “Son of Saul” boasts one of the most rigorously committed aesthetics in recent memory. Without subduing the roving camera of DoP Mátyás Erdély to the limitations of first-person photography, Nemes finds a radical method of plunging the viewer into the subjective experiences of the protagonist: Géza Röhrig’s Holocaust prisoner Saul Auslander.
Two shots prevail throughout the proceedings. The first is a rushing handheld shot taken over Saul’s shoulder while he is in motion, usually with an extremely limiting shallow depth of field. The other is a close-up of his stoic face, stark in how little it emotes. Imagine the kinetic immediacy of Emmanuel Lubezki combined with the claustrophobic intimacy of Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc.”
It’s the kind of choice that can only be made by an established auteur who has earned complete autonomy, or a brash newcomer yet to learn the so-called rules. Nemes is the latter, which only adds to the wonder “Son of Saul” inspires.
His technique hardly constitutes some kind of self-imposed artistic chastity belt, however. Nemes uses his form to illuminate the complexities of his content (co-written with Clara Royer), allowing for a more nuanced understanding of these unimaginable atrocities. Saul, a member of the Sonderkommando group that was forced to become cogs in the Nazi machinery of mass murder, never falls into a clear cut category. He is neither entirely hero or villain, victim or perpetrator. Saul is just a human trying to survive inhuman conditions in any way possible, and the camerawork suggests his method of coping is to block out the world beyond his nose.
Marshall and the Movies 
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