Oscar winner: Best Foreign Language Film of the Year - Hungary
Saul is a Sonderkommando, a prisoner in a Nazi death camp, working in unloading bodies from the gas chamber.
The movie has a unique style. It's shot in 1.37:1 AR, all hand-held following Saul in extreme close-up, his face taking almost half the screen in shallow focus, making everything that happens in the background shown out of focus, almost the entire movie. It gives a claustrophobic feeling and focus on the lead character, almost like a third-person perspective, almost being a part with the actor as things happen in the background, somewhat detached from the horror around him. Some of the scenes are very long continuous takes (such as the first shot of the movie, 3.5 minutes long).
Production value is good, making the film seem quite authentic, although hard to grasp everything due to the out of focus shots during the entire movie.
The story felt quite shallow and the motivation of the lead character still remains unclear and illogical to me. In the end, the plot felt empty and missing. It felt like a small story, but its importance was showing some of the terrible things that happened in the death camp.
In addition, the main character is a Sonderkommando, working with the Kapo and basically collaborating with the Nazis in order to save himself in a somewhat selfish way while watching masses of people being murdered like animals. He's part of the Nazi machine that lies to the victims in order to keep them calm just before killing them. Obviously, it makes it much harder for the viewer to identify and feel empathy for the character.
All in all, I expected a lot more from this movie. I expected a more profound story and in that respect I'm disappointed. I also expected to be a lot more moved, but the movie kept you pretty detached from the feelings, in addition to feeling ambiguous for the main character (as I mentioned above). On the other hand, they managed to recreate quite an authentic atmosphere and production value is very good.
I felt a bit of influence from COME AND SEE (1985) (especially toward the end of the movie) and based on IMDb's trivia, the director indeed cited that movie as an inspiration.
Saul is a Sonderkommando, a prisoner in a Nazi death camp, working in unloading bodies from the gas chamber.
The movie has a unique style. It's shot in 1.37:1 AR, all hand-held following Saul in extreme close-up, his face taking almost half the screen in shallow focus, making everything that happens in the background shown out of focus, almost the entire movie. It gives a claustrophobic feeling and focus on the lead character, almost like a third-person perspective, almost being a part with the actor as things happen in the background, somewhat detached from the horror around him. Some of the scenes are very long continuous takes (such as the first shot of the movie, 3.5 minutes long).
Production value is good, making the film seem quite authentic, although hard to grasp everything due to the out of focus shots during the entire movie.
The story felt quite shallow and the motivation of the lead character still remains unclear and illogical to me. In the end, the plot felt empty and missing. It felt like a small story, but its importance was showing some of the terrible things that happened in the death camp.
In addition, the main character is a Sonderkommando, working with the Kapo and basically collaborating with the Nazis in order to save himself in a somewhat selfish way while watching masses of people being murdered like animals. He's part of the Nazi machine that lies to the victims in order to keep them calm just before killing them. Obviously, it makes it much harder for the viewer to identify and feel empathy for the character.
All in all, I expected a lot more from this movie. I expected a more profound story and in that respect I'm disappointed. I also expected to be a lot more moved, but the movie kept you pretty detached from the feelings, in addition to feeling ambiguous for the main character (as I mentioned above). On the other hand, they managed to recreate quite an authentic atmosphere and production value is very good.
I felt a bit of influence from COME AND SEE (1985) (especially toward the end of the movie) and based on IMDb's trivia, the director indeed cited that movie as an inspiration.