The Second World War seems to be gradually passing away from us in the long history. It may be difficult for us in peaceful times to understand and appreciate the pain, suffering and bitterness at that time, but passing away does not mean the end. not late.
For more than half a century, countless filmmakers have brought this history to the screen again and again. There are "Schindler's List" which generally tells the story of life in war, and the 566-minute documentary "The Cataclysm". The true restoration of the extermination of Jews during World War II will also be a film full of oriental charm and violence like "The Thirteen Hairpins of Jinling". The previous attempts and exploration of this subject have been almost saturated, and it seems difficult to come up with new ideas. But the birth of Hungarian director Laszlo Gerais' debut film "Son of Sol" has opened the door for us to re-understand Nazi Germany during World War II.
This is actually a film that is neither new nor old. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. There are many awards, and the gold content is also very high. Naturally, there is its reason. This is a very stylized film. As far as the author's personal opinion is concerned, the whole film is very boring and depressing, but the story is very tense. After watching it, I have a lot of aftertastes.
The story sounds magical, but it is also one of the highlights of the whole film. Son of Saul is set in Auschwitz in 1944, and Saul, a Jew from Hungary, works in a contingent in a concentration camp. Prisoners serving on the task force were responsible for the day-to-day transportation, including gathering new batches into the gas chambers and disposing of the bodies before the next wave arrived. And those on the task force would be executed after four months. During a job, Sol had a paranoid and confusing idea: He found a boy's body was his "son", so he set out to find a rabbi to bury the boy.
The appearance of this idea is extremely dangerous, not only for his own safety, but also for other people in the task force. In addition, a very interesting part of the story setting is that Sol himself does not know whether the boy he saw at a glance is his own son. From a personal understanding, the boy should not be Thor's son. Some of the lines in the movie also corroborate my thoughts. When Sol was looking for the rabbi wholeheartedly, the "worker" said to Sol, "But you don't have a son." Sol's response was a little hesitant, but he still insisted that this was his son.
In fact, the focus of the story is not whether the boy is Saul's son. If so, everything becomes understandable; if not, the meaning of the film is raised to a higher level. In the absence of his son, Thor's behavior became criticized and incomprehensible.
But perhaps Saul's paranoia can be understood a little bit if we put ourselves back in the context of the time. It was a dark age where no light could be seen. It can be said that it was a time when the light of mankind was about to go out, and wanton slaughter had become commonplace. And especially in a place like Auschwitz, where darkness shrouded everyone's head, Thor's act of burying his "son" was the last light of faith he was looking for in the endless darkness. He rejected alternative methods of burial proposed by his "colleagues" and was bent on burying his "son" in the most orthodox Jewish burial. This is a very noble belief of believers, full of piety and respect.
Dedicated to burying his "son", he is actually burying himself. Why do I make this judgment? There is such a clip in the film: Saul backs the boy from the autopsy room to his home, a move that has drawn dissatisfaction from his "colleagues". The colleague complained, "You're going to kill us all like this!" Saul turned his face and said, "We're dead."
In just a few dozen seconds of footage and dialogue, it can be seen that Sol has a clear understanding of the environment he is in. When Sol's "colleagues" were conspiring to resist and fight for their lives, Sol actually didn't have much hope for this ideal of survival, or it could be said to be numb and desperate. He needed someone to help his "son". A burial to prove that he was still alive, at least in that "God is dead" era. At the end of the film, the ideal seems to have a miracle, and God seemed to hear their call, and they managed to escape from Auschwitz, but the miracle was short-lived, with the departure of the German-like blond boy. After all, everyone was killed, and only the lush green and the long-lasting gunshots remained in the picture. It was the disappearance of the light of faith, the light of humanity.
Just looking at the angle of the film is not enough to make it a light for a new theme. The most stylized part of the film is that it is shot from Sol's perspective throughout the whole process. The camera basically focuses on the protagonist's head. Points lead to strong blurring of the background, and it is often a long shot of more than ten minutes when the camera is turned on. The overall impression is as if the audience has been following behind Sol, full of endless rampages, which are overwhelming. Behind the strong blurred background is the miserable world of Auschwitz. This deliberate fading and blurring of the tragedies and evils of the war attracts our attention even more. See what's going on right now.
In the blurred background, it is no longer the normal depth of field. The naked victims, piled up corpses, raging fires, ashes flying in the sky, mass graves and so on are quietly happening. The director helped us to abandon them. From the perspective of God in previous movies, I felt everything at that time as a witness. Compared with other films, we as audiences are actually passively placed in this position, embarrassed to accept the evils of that era.
Before watching "Son of Sol", I hope everyone is mentally prepared, because it is not as exciting and exciting as other movies, and you may feel dull, but this is the charm of this movie.
View more about Son of Saul reviews
