HeвЂ™s our guide on this tour of Hell, but heвЂ™s a deeply humane one. ThatвЂ™s all the more reason to stick close to Saul, which is clearly the movieвЂ™s design. Disturbingly blurry images often lurk just on the periphery: Human corpses still pink with life are dragged as if they were animal carcasses (camp officials refer to them as вЂњpiecesвЂќ), and the movieвЂ™s sound design is distressingly effective-the victimsвЂ™ screams may be muted, but thereвЂ™s no blocking them out.

Nemes keeps the camera moving almost constantly, focusing mostly on SaulвЂ™s face, though also quite often on his back-he wears a gray coat with an X marked on it, and thereвЂ™s no way to avoid fixating on it. Still, you should brace yourself for the experience of watching it. It moves so quickly, and relies so little on dialogue, that you need to race a little to keep up with it, and to keep your eyes open every second. For all its intensity, Son of Saul is never ponderous. Its director and co-writer, Hungarian filmmaker LГЎszlГі Nemes (making his feature-film debut), isnвЂ™t just re-creating unspeakable sadness but electrifying it with a kind of somber energy. Son of Saul doesnвЂ™t give the audience anything so falsely comforting as a happy ending-how could it? But it treats suffering as a living, breathing entity, not just as a dramatistвЂ™s tool or a means of punishing an audience. But if itвЂ™s a demanding film, in the end it isnвЂ™t a despairing one. ThereвЂ™s no way to describe Son of Saul, winner of the Grand Prix in Cannes last year, without making it sound like one of those movies you know you ought to see but will find any excuse to avoid.

ItвЂ™s the last thing that can keep him human. But everything in SaulвЂ™s face-a haunted woodcut, painfully alive to everything around him-tells us that this small but highly risky gesture is imperative. In the context of the surrounding horrors, itвЂ™s a foolвЂ™s errand. Saul witnesses all of this-in fact, weвЂ™re with Saul every moment, so weвЂ™re at least brushed with an awareness of his surroundings-and becomes consumed with saving the boy from the knife and finding a rabbi to recite the Kaddish. Saul is on duty when a boy, near miraculously, survives the gas chamber-the young man is quickly put to death by a camp doctor, and an autopsy is ordered, to determine what made him so tenacious. In Son of Saul, set in Auschwitz in 1944, Hungarian-born actor GГ©za RГ¶hrig plays the Saul of the title, a member of the Sonderkommando, special groups of death-camp prisoners forced to dispose of the bodies of their own people-only, before long, to face extermination themselves. For here on, his own survival becomes secondary вЂ“ something any parent would be able to understand.In a movie, sometimes one face is everything. HeвЂ™s grappling for some sense of moral righteousness, one act that can cleanse himself of the sins heвЂ™s been forced to commit in order to stay alive. And Saul becomes obsessed with stealing his body from the morgue, finding a rabbi amongst the campвЂ™s prisoners, and giving the boy a proper Jewish burial. The Nazi doctors put the child out of his misery. And Saul, whether itвЂ™s something he imagines or if itвЂ™s in fact the case, recognizes the boy as his son. As Saul clears the lifeless bodies out of the gas chamber, thereвЂ™s one whoвЂ™s still breathing, clinging to life. It has the raw, sickening force of a documentary we watch through spread fingers. ThereвЂ™s no room for sentimentality or conventional Hollywood narative in his film. But Nemes is telling his story in a revolutionary new wayвЂ“and itвЂ™s devastating. ItвЂ™s impossible to be a lover of cinema without having been down this road before in films like SchindlerвЂ™s List and The Pianist. Through it all, SaulвЂ™s face doesnвЂ™t change. Who knows how many times heвЂ™s heard these same lies? Within moments we hear banging on the shower doors, muffled cries of anguish. The expression on SaulвЂ™s face is utterly deadpan. We see Saul silently ushering a new group of arrivals into the showers, where Nazi camp workers promise them hot meals, jobs, and pay. From the opening scene of the film, Nemes and RГ¶hrig push the audience into the infernal abyss with them. In return, their own executions are delayed.

Saul is a Hungarian Jew who works with an Auschwitz вЂњSonderkommandoвЂќ unitвЂ“a special group of concentration camp prisoners who sort through the belongings of those marked for death and dispose of their corpses like hellвЂ™s janitors. His performance is searing and unshakeable. GГ©za RГ¶hrig, a newcomer himself whose day job in real life is teaching Jewish studies at a Brooklyn private school, stars as Saul Auslander. Winner of the Grand Prix at this yearвЂ™s Cannes Film Festival, first-time filmmaker LГЎszlГі NemesвЂ™ shattering Holocaust drama is about trying to hold on to the smallest shred of humanity in the midst of the most inhumane chapter in history.

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