Event

Son of Saul @ SLIFF

Son of Saul
László Nemes, Hungary, 2015, 107 min., Hungarian, Yiddish, German & Polish
Sunday, Nov. 8, 6:15 p.m., Webster U./Moore
Saul Ausländer is a Hungarian member of Auschwitz's Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination. While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the body of a boy he takes for his son. As the Sonderkommando plans a rebellion, Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: save the child's body from the flames, find a rabbi to recite the mourner's Kaddish, and offer the boy a proper burial. First-time helmer László Nemes won the prestigious Jury Grand Prize for direction at the Cannes Film Festival. Variety writes of this "terrifyingly accomplished first feature": "Possessed by the same single-minded intensity that drives its protagonist's every step, 'Son of Saul' plunges the viewer into a hell that exists beyond the limits of comprehension or representation. The result is as grim and unyielding a depiction of the Holocaust as has yet been made on that cinematically overworked subject -- a masterful exercise in narrative deprivation and sensory overload that recasts familiar horrors in daringly existential terms."