Laszlo Gerais' Son of Saul (2015), which won the 2016 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is no surprise. Different people are bound to have different interpretations. Put its authenticity aside for the moment. The composure, stubbornness, and determination of Sol's single tendon is incredible enough. There is indeed a little discomfort caused by the unease and confusion in the throat.
At Auschwitz in 1944, the massacre carried out by the German army had reached its climax. Hundreds of thousands of Jews and their death row prisoners were sent to crematoriums every day, and even later, the executioners decided that the crematorium was not "burning" fast enough, and they simply used "mass graves" to bury them alive.
Sol's "prisoner task force", known as "secret porters", all have red crosses on their backs. They seem to be treated differently from other death row prisoners, but they will still be executed after a few months. In the end, there is no escape, and the Peterman detachment he is in has a wise and brave person like Abraham, who gathers everyone and prepares to plan a unified escape before they are executed. But escape is easier said than done, requiring various necessary conditions, such as powder for explosives. Their daily job is to transport the bodies to the crematorium, and then remove the steady stream of ashes.
Sol, who has always been reticent, is more concerned about another matter. While cleaning the autopsy room, he saw a handsome young man lying there, and he asked the Hungarian doctor to keep a dead body for the child. The good-natured middle-aged doctor promised him five minutes to be alone with the dead boy. After that, after tossing and turning, Sol actually smuggled the boy's body to his cell and hid it. Abraham accused him of disregarding everyone's life, because once found, everyone would be executed quickly. But in Sol's view, everyone is dead in the end anyway.
The question is, since everyone is dead, and since hundreds of thousands of corpses are burned every day, why is this generous Sol only interested in this boy. According to him, the boy is his son. But Abraham didn't believe it when he died. He said that you and your wife have no sons. Sol said it was before his wife. It doesn't matter whether it is his son or not, the important thing is that Thor must give the boy a complete burial according to the Jewish ritual. This requires finding a rabbi who can preside over the ceremony. But the vast sea of prisoners is easier said than done.
Hard work pays off. Until the end, when waves of death row prisoners were stripped naked and were about to be incinerated, they finally found a death row prisoner who was about to be executed. Sol would rather risk the courage to die for the execution to exchange with him, but the irony was that the rabbi did not really Than, just a fake who is afraid of death. But Sol couldn't care less. He desperately wanted the rabbi to pray for the child's burial in the cell. But there is no room to breathe. It is heard that they will be executed tomorrow, and the prisoners are ready to flee, but the powder that Sol smuggled from Fred in the female cell is discarded, making the perfect escape plan come to nothing.
The escape operation could not be implemented, and the Peterman detachment carried out a riot on the spot. The life of this life, together with the dust of the previous life, flees, dances wildly and is frightened. Sol still stubbornly carried the boy's body and escaped from the gunfire and dust. He took the rabbi by the river and quickly picked up the soil with his hands to prepare for the burial.
The rabbi was sullen, unable to utter a single fart, and only when he choked out a sentence, he saw the fleeing prisoners shouting "run away, the Germans are here". Have to cross the river. In the river, because Sol was exhausted, the boy's body slipped from his hands and drifted into the distance.
Sol swam ashore with a heavy expression on his face. The inmates fled to an abandoned house to catch their breath. At this time, a little blond boy stood in front of the door, and the indifferent Sol finally smiled for the first time, as if the "son" that had slipped from his hand was reborn. This reminds me of Lu Chuan's "Nanjing! Nanjing! ", in the end, the character played by Fan Wei laughed at the Japanese devils, which is the hope for the future. But the little boy who escaped from the German army soon heard a lot of gunfire.
Sol and the others did not escape the clutches of the German army, nor did they wait for the arrival of the Allied forces. But Sol saw the little boy alive. No matter where the little boy came from, it was the stretch of life. Of course, the appearance of this little boy also made me feel a little abrupt, or was forced into the plot abruptly. The good connection of the film just needs a natural button, but the overall flaws of the film are not concealed.
It is interesting to note that after the 2015 "Sister Ida" (also translated as "Ida"), the two consecutive Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film were given to films related to World War II and Jews, and they were all from Eastern Europe. Together with the previous Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" and "The Pianist" and other films. It seems that "World War II", "Auschwitz" and Jews are still topics of concern and interest to the film industry. This is not only to tell the suffering of war, but also to show some kind of worry about reality. It is also a warning to the world and those who come. Human beings must not use any excuse to repeat the dark and dark days.
"Son of Sol" has a dozen or so seconds of ambiguity at the beginning, which is doomed to the ambiguity of the plot. What is thought-provoking is that even if we are fellow prisoners, even if we do the saddest things every day, even if we will die in the end, there will still be inexplicable hostility between them, not to mention the contempt for the Jews and the lack of friendship. despise. The "trial head" is like the "prison head", directly managing and repairing death row prisoners. Accordingly, the German army also had a "public opinion" basis for the Holocaust. This is the embarrassment of human nature in special situations.
Another scene of the film is very moving. When Thor meets his long-lost lover, Fred, he is warned not to make physical contact, but to stare at each other, a final stare that never returns with a cold, sad heart. What Fred gave him was powder, but also a kind of love and energy of life. But the powder was later lost by him because he only had the child he thought was his "son" in his heart.
The "hysteria" of Sol's almost obsessive-compulsive disorder in the film can't help but make people feel a little "contrived", but it shows a ray of light in the darkness of the depths of human nature. The barbed wire fence of Auschwitz was cold. This is the most touching main tone of the film, and it is also the origin of the endless flow of human beings.
2016, 4, 6
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