Son of Saul (2015)
Son of Saul (Hungarian: Saul fia) is a 2015 Hungarian historical drama film directed by László Nemes, in his feature directorial debut, and co-written by Nemes and Clara Royer. It is set in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, and follows a day-and-a-half in the life of Saul Ausländer (played by Géza Röhrig), a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando. The film premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. It was also shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. The film won the award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards. It is the ninth Hungarian film to be nominated for the award, and the first since István Szabó’s Hanussen in 1988. It is the second Hungarian film to win the award, the first being Szabó’s Mephisto in 1981. It also won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, becoming the first Hungarian film to win the award. The Film, on a budget of €1.5 million, earned US$9.7 million.RELATED:
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Plot.
In October 1944, Saul Ausländer works as a Sonderkommando Jewish–Hungarian prisoner in Auschwitz. His job is to salvage valuables from the clothing of corpses, drag them from the gas chambers and scrub the gas chambers before the next group of victims arrives to be murdered. He works stoically, seemingly having been numbed by the daily attrocities. Among the dead after a gassing, Saul sees a boy who is still barely alive suffocated by a Nazi doctor who calls for an autopsy on the boy. Saul steps forth and insists on carrying the body himself to the prison doctor, Miklós Nyiszli, a fellow Hungarian prisoner and a forced assistant to Josef Mengele.
He asks Miklós to not cut up the boy, so he can give him a proper Jewish burial. Miklós declines, but says he can have five minutes alone with the boy tonight, before the cremation. Saul goes in search of a Rabbi to perform the funeral ritual. He goes to Rabbi Frankel in the crematorium, who dismisses Saul’s concern and suggests that Saul perform the burial himself.
Saul overhears Sonderkommando Abraham talk about an uprising against the SS-guards with Oberkapo Biederman (Urs Rechn). Biederman first wants to photograph the camp’s horrors using a camera collected from the clothing of an earlier murdered caravan, and smuggle the pictures outside to attract attention and help.
Saul asks for another rabbi and Abraham tells him of “the Renegade,” a Greek Rabbi who has lost his faith. Saul in return offers his assistance in their plan and is instructed to go with a prisoner (Katz) to repair a shack; he is given a piece of jewellery for use as a bribe in case he’s caught. When Saul and Katz arrive at the shack, Saul pretends to fix the front door’s lock, while Katz takes out a camera from inside the shack and starts to take pictures of the cremation. Saul hears the guards and hides the camera outside in a drain. The guards search the shack, only to find nothing.
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Development
Nemes conceived of the film from the book The Scrolls of Auschwitz, a collection of testimonies by Sonderkommando members, after discovering it during the production of Béla Tarr’s The Man from London in 2005 when he was working as Tarr’s assistant. Nemes started working on the screenplay with Royer in 2010 and completed the first draft in 2011. The writers spent several years on research, while historians such as Gideon Greif, Philippe Mesnard and Zoltán Vági provided support for the film. The project struggled to find financial backers due to the film’s unconventional approach and Nemes’s lack of experience in directing a feature film. Originally intended to be a French production with a French protagonist, the film was produced entirely in Hungary. After potential co-production partners in France, Israel, Germany and Austria turned down the project, the €1.5 million budget was ultimately covered by the Hungarian National Film Fund, Hungarian tax credits and the Claims Conference, accounting respectively for 70%, 25% and 5%.
Casting, Filming.
Nemes insisted on casting actors who spoke their characters’ own languages. New York City-based Hungarian poet Géza Röhrig, who had not acted in film since the 1980s, was cast as the main character, Saul, after being considered originally for a supporting role. The film was shot on 35 mm film in 28 days in Budafok, Budapest. A 40 mm lens and the Academy aspect ratio of 1.375:1 were adopted to realise shallow focus and a portrait-like narrow field of vision. Architect and liberal activist László Rajk, who also worked on the permanent Hungarian exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, designed the re-creation of the crematoria.