a 40mm lens in Academy aspect ratio, oftentimes mere inches away from actors’ faces, creating a narrow, claustrophobic field of vision and lending many of the shots a frenetic, point-of-view feel13. In interviews, Nemes discusses many of these formal decisions as “rules” the crew made, including that “this is not a beautiful film, so no beautiful shots” and that “the camera should [always] be trained at eye level, making it a very subjective experience14. The film is comprised of only 85 shots across its 1:47 runtime; an average film has more than a thousand15. The result of Nemes’ skill is a physical immersion that serves the third, and most shocking, aspect: its material. Son of Saul takes the viewer into a day in the life of a Sonderkommando16, a concentration camp prisoner who was forced to corral new arrivals, aid in gas chamber operations, and dispose of bodies. Therein lies the challenging relevance of the movie to this analysis: when professionalism is required within victimhood.
Son of Saul’s plot is deceptively straightforward. The film opens with a title card in Hungarian defining Sonderkommando—including that “they work no longer than a few months before being executed”—and mentioning an alternative job title: Geheimnisträger or “bearers of secrets.” We are introduced immediately to Saul, whose bloodied lip, darting eyes, and sunken face suggest recent hardship. Saul waits in a concrete basement chamber, shuffling between people undressing, as a calm but firm German voice monologues: “you're exactly the kind of people we need in our workshops. Everyone gets work and a good salary. After the shower and the hot soup, come directly to me. We need nurses in our hospital. We need craftsmen of all kinds. Tablemakers, carpenters, masons, cement workers, mechanics locksmiths, electricians.”
The Nazi deceit rests on the lie that the concentration camp is similar to the forced labor camps to which the Jews would have been accustomed. The voice leverages the same industrial language of business and “usefulness” to calm the nervous crowd. Of course, it’s a ruse and once the heavy iron door shuts, screams begin to emit from the chamber. Completely desensitized, the clang of the door and the clamor inside are background noise to Saul as he immediately and mechanically begins picking up all the clothes, searching them for any luxury items, and keeping his thousand-yard stare fixed into the distance. As Saul continues throughout his “workday,” the camera remains locked onto his face, leaving the background fuzzy: blurred clothed bodies ushered from the trains, blurred naked living bodies in the undressing room, blurred naked dead bodies in a pile in the gas chamber. These horrors make no sense. Neither does Saul’s own forced complicity, so he disassociates from his own life as we see in the out-of-focus backdrop. Professional euphemism is everywhere in the chambers amongst the laborers; Nazi officers scream at Sonderkommandos to “burn the ‘pieces’”—referring to the human remains. The clockwork schedule of the gas chambers gives the men only a minute of downtime before they are told to “get back to work” with a new batch of Jews.
After a grisly killing in the gas chamber, the Sonderkommandos find a boy who has somehow survived. They alert a Nazi doctor, who arrives, takes the boy’s pulse, and then wordlessly suffocates him with his bare hands before instructing his assistant to “open him up.”17 Saul watches this unfold and then hurries to the clinic, where he pleads with the assistant to let him take the boy’s corpse. The assistant says no but, himself a prisoner, is sympathetic and offers five minutes with the boy later that night. Saul rushes to the Sonderkommandos’ rabbi-in-residence and reveals his purpose for asking about the boy: “Rabbi—there’s someone I want to bury!” But the rabbi is just as beaten down as all his fellow forced laborers and mutters, “just say
a 40mm lens in Academy aspect ratio, oftentimes mere inches away from actors’ faces, creating a narrow, claustrophobic field of vision and lending many of the shots a frenetic, point-of-view feel13. In interviews, Nemes discusses many of these formal decisions as “rules” the crew made, including that “this is not a beautiful film, so no beautiful shots” and that “the camera should [always] be trained at eye level, making it a very subjective experience14. The film is comprised of only 85 shots across its 1:47 runtime; an average film has more than a thousand15. The result of Nemes’ skill is a physical immersion that serves the third, and most shocking, aspect: its material. Son of Saul takes the viewer into a day in the life of a Sonderkommando16, a concentration camp prisoner who was forced to corral new arrivals, aid in gas chamber operations, and dispose of bodies. Therein lies the challenging relevance of the movie to this analysis: when professionalism is required within victimhood.
Son of Saul’s plot is deceptively straightforward. The film opens with a title card in Hungarian defining Sonderkommando—including that “they work no longer than a few months before being executed”—and mentioning an alternative job title: Geheimnisträger or “bearers of secrets.” We are introduced immediately to Saul, whose bloodied lip, darting eyes, and sunken face suggest recent hardship. Saul waits in a concrete basement chamber, shuffling between people undressing, as a calm but firm German voice monologues: “you're exactly the kind of people we need in our workshops. Everyone gets work and a good salary. After the shower and the hot soup, come directly to me. We need nurses in our hospital. We need craftsmen of all kinds. Tablemakers, carpenters, masons, cement workers, mechanics locksmiths, electricians.”
The Nazi deceit rests on the lie that the concentration camp is similar to the forced labor camps to which the Jews would have been accustomed. The voice leverages the same industrial language of business and “usefulness” to calm the nervous crowd. Of course, it’s a ruse and once the heavy iron door shuts, screams begin to emit from the chamber. Completely desensitized, the clang of the door and the clamor inside are background noise to Saul as he immediately and mechanically begins picking up all the clothes, searching them for any luxury items, and keeping his thousand-yard stare fixed into the distance. As Saul continues throughout his “workday,” the camera remains locked onto his face, leaving the background fuzzy: blurred clothed bodies ushered from the trains, blurred naked living bodies in the undressing room, blurred naked dead bodies in a pile in the gas chamber. These horrors make no sense. Neither does Saul’s own forced complicity, so he disassociates from his own life as we see in the out-of-focus backdrop. Professional euphemism is everywhere in the chambers amongst the laborers; Nazi officers scream at Sonderkommandos to “burn the ‘pieces’”—referring to the human remains. The clockwork schedule of the gas chambers gives the men only a minute of downtime before they are told to “get back to work” with a new batch of Jews.
After a grisly killing in the gas chamber, the Sonderkommandos find a boy who has somehow survived. They alert a Nazi doctor, who arrives, takes the boy’s pulse, and then wordlessly suffocates him with his bare hands before instructing his assistant to “open him up.”17 Saul watches this unfold and then hurries to the clinic, where he pleads with the assistant to let him take the boy’s corpse. The assistant says no but, himself a prisoner, is sympathetic and offers five minutes with the boy later that night. Saul rushes to the Sonderkommandos’ rabbi-in-residence and reveals his purpose for asking about the boy: “Rabbi—there’s someone I want to bury!” But the rabbi is just as beaten down as all his fellow forced laborers and mutters, “just say
13. See the photograph accompanying the article cited here; that proximity between the camera and actor is very challenging, and heavily contributes to the film’s feel. Gregg Kilday, “How ‘Son of Saul’ Defied the Dangers of Re-Creating the Holocaust”, The Hollywood Reporter, November 16, 2015.
14. Zhuo-Ning Su, “Son of Saul Director László Nemes on Capturing a Portrait of Hell and the Spiritual Experience of Cannes”, The Film Stage, October 8, 2015.
15. Greg Miller, “Data from a Century of Cinema Reveals How Movies Have Evolved”, Wired, September 8, 2014.
16. German for “special unit”—an example of wartime Nazi euphemism.
17. An instance that—like other scenes in both this movie and Schindler’s List – could be an important teaching tool for FASPE Medical cohort colleagues.
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