son of saul

Braeden 2022-04-19 09:02:27

I really don't want to watch the movie a second time. At the end of the auditorium, there was no sound at all, and everyone was silent in tacit understanding after they came out, for fear of breaking the mourning of others.
It was the first time I could feel the horrors of the concentration camps so vividly, and it was a hell of giving up all hope. For the first time, I felt that German was so inhuman, so brutal, that I even began to understand a little bit why German literature should be overthrown and rebuilt after the war. What hurts the most is Saul's taciturn, downcast eyes, and silent movements, expressing submission and despair. He lived, in his own words, already dead.
Why did Saul stubbornly bury a child who was most likely not his son in Jewish rituals? There is indeed a lack of psychological support from a narrative level - this thinness is made even more absurd by the final consequence: the death of all the Rangers. I saw a film review saying that he was saving his own sins by killing his fellow man and redeeming his soul through Jewish rituals, but this undoubtedly puts Saul in an awkward position of selfishness. ——Or put it on a symbolic level to be more convincing, but this does not hide the lack of rationality at the narrative level. The child must be a symbol of the future, a symbol of innocence, the extreme opposite of Saul's circumstances, heaven. Saul may have been an extremely devout Jew, so burying the child would obviously mean caring for his nation, his religion, and the tiniest bit of humanity at the same time.
Except for this puzzling main line, everything else is almost perfect. I have never seen a movie that creates such a cold and restrained hell on earth.
Tucao about the translation: Saul is obviously Saul, why should it be translated into Saul? It's like Norse mythology...

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Extended Reading

Son of Saul quotes

  • Abraham Warszawski: Who's this boy?

    Saul Ausländer: My son.

    Abraham Warszawski: But you have no son.

    Saul Ausländer: I do. I have to bury him.

    Abraham Warszawski: You don't need a rabbi for that.

    Saul Ausländer: At least he'll do what's right.

  • Saul Ausländer: I have to take care of my son. He's not from my wife.

    Abraham Warszawski: When did you last see him?

    [pause]

    Abraham Warszawski: You have no son.