Géza Röhrig (Sony Pictures Classics)

We meet Saul (Géza Röhrig) shepherding naked prisoners into the gas chambers. Cinematographer Mátyás Erdély keeps close to the film’s protagonist, nearly filling the frame with a grizzled face so stoic that you can’t help but project the pain he must feel. Son of Saul is shot mostly in shallow focus, so Saul appears to pass through blurred visions that you really don’t want to see clearly. But you can still hear the horrifying screams after Saul and his fellow workers close the door on the gas chambers.

Saul is a Hungarian prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and he’s also a member of the Sonderkommando, who get to live a few months longer in order to help the Nazis in their grisly tasks. This particular task gets worse: forced to clean up the bodies in the gas chambers, Saul sees a young boy whom he believes is his son. He’s still alive.

It gets even worse: Saul watches in horror as a Nazi officer holds his hand over the barely breathing boy’s mouth to kill him.

This happens in the first five minutes of the movie, and I’m not sure there are many of you strong enough to even read about it without getting teary. There are still 100 minutes more to go.

The film’s conflict comes from the grieving father’s attempt to properly bury his son. He wants to do the right thing in a climate where it’s impossible, but he is determined to persuade everyone from doctors to an imprisoned rabbi to help him on his personal task. But as he seeks help for his own plight he puts others in danger, hastening a death that seems inevitable anyway.

First-time director László Nemes just received a much-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. His visual and thematic focus on Saul makes this a painfully immersive experience, so much so that it can be disorienting. You can hear the chaos that surrounds Saul, but you can’t quite see it through the short depth-of-field. There lays the effectiveness of a movie that’s not particularly gory but is absolutely grueling. Note: Landmark’s E Street Cinema will be screening the film in a 35mm print.

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Son of Saul
Directed by
Written by László Nemes and Clara Royer
Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn
Rated R for disturbing violent content, and some graphic nudity
107 minutes
Opens today at E Street Landmark Cinema.