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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Yoga comes to Bellview ... Wet storm will bring mountain snow, valley rain ... FERC rejects Jordan Cove LNG project ... Yoga comes to Bellview ... Wet storm will bring mountain snow, valley rain ... FERC rejects Jordan Cove LNG project ... MOVIE REVIEW 'Son of Saul' is like nothing you've ever seen before Comment By Chris Honoré for Revels DailyTidings.com By Chris Honoré for Revels Posted Mar. 10, 2016 at 12:01 AM By Chris Honoré for Revels Posted Mar. 10, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Social News Son of Saul ; Hungarian with subtitles; 107 min; Rated R To quickly establish this extraordinary and moving film’s bona fides, “Son of Saul” won the Palm Grand Prix at Cannes, followed by a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Its genre is the Holocaust, a source for countless stories that ponder the existential question: How could such a profound failure of the human spirit and conscience ever have occurred? It is assumed that we have seen the horrifying images of men and women, mere skeletons, covered in striped rags, pressed against a wire fence, their hollow eyes gazing out, vacant and beyond reach. For that moment, at least, they have survived an abyss that still remains all but indescribable; yet we know now, fully, that it did occur and some of those who stood at the wire or lay crowded in wooden slatted bunks have born witness to a barbarity the description of which still eludes even those who lived it. In the course of our lives it may be that we have grown inured to those images: human beings stacked like cords of wood, awaiting their final journey into deep pits or ovens. But Hungarian writer and director Laszlo Nemes has created in “The Son of Saul,” a film that avoids the standard Holocaust tropes: the camera panning a concentration camp (in this case its Auschwitz-Birkenau), shots of Nazi guards patrolling the perimeters with snarling dogs, or barracks with smoke stacks in the background. Instead, he focuses on one man, Saul (Geza Rohrig), and using a shallow focus format and an almost square screen, he follows him closely, intently. So tight are these sustained shots, that what Saul sees is what we see, the rest remains slightly out of focus, melding into a horror of sounds, gunshots, images of dead bodies, fires from the ovens. Saul, as it is explained, is a member of what was called the Sonderkommando — prisoners who were forced to assist the Germans in their industrial task of exterminating; told to guide the recent transport arrivals into large rooms, help them undress, and move them into “the showers” where they were gassed. They would then remove the bodies and prepare the room for the next group. His face, devoid of emotions, his feelings long ago extinguished, is a study in controlled, buried pain. As he is clearing a room of the dead, he comes across the body of a boy that he later insists is his son. He carries him not to the ovens but to a doctor (also a Jew) and asks him to hide the boy so that he might give him a proper Jewish burial and recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. Abruptly, Saul decides to risk his life and the life of his fellow prisoners in order to find a rabbi to perform the ceremony. And so he wanders through scene after scene of agony, into areas where all humanity has been abandoned. His is a walking nightmare, filled with screams and confusion. Yet, he is on an all-consuming mission. What is not clear is if this dead boy is actually his son or if he is merely reflective of Saul’s wish to touch and express his own deeply embedded humanity, perhaps for one last time. What Saul is not is a vehicle for even a shred of sentimentality. Instead, the film asks, sparely, how the human soul could become so twisted by an inexplicable evil that such a place as Auschwitz could exist, and it poses that question in the most personal way as if the camera were looking over the shoulder of Saul, every moment of depravity offered without visible reaction. “Son of Saul” is a haunting film, unlike anything you will have ever seen before. Is it grim? Indeed. Harrowing? Yes. Should we look away? No. It is a powerful reminder that this reality is ever with us, barely hidden beneath a patina of civility. Or made self-evident when the mask slips away. By Chris Honoré for Revels DailyTidings.com By Chris Honoré for Revels Posted Mar. 10, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. 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