Son of Saul
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Son of Saul |
| Original title | Saul fia |
| Country of production | Hungary |
| original language | Hungarian , Yiddish , German , Polish |
| Publishing year | 2015 |
| length | 107 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | László Nemes |
| script | László Nemes, Clara Royer |
| production |
Gábor Rajna , Gábor Sipos |
| music | László Melis |
| camera | Mátyás Erdély |
| cut | Matthieu Taponier |
| occupation | |
| |
Son of Saul (original title: Saul fia, German "Saul's son") is a Hungarian film drama by the director and author László Nemes about the possibilities and limits of resistance in a Nazi extermination camp during the Second World War . The script was written by Nemes together with Clara Royer . The film premiered at the 2015 Cannes International Film Festival , where it won the Grand Jury Prize . It was then shown in a special screening at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival . On Yom HaScho'a , the Claims Conference showed the film in Berlin in a closed screening. With the special presentation, the Claims Conference recalled that there are still numerous Holocaust survivors around the world who live in poverty and are in need of care. In Germany, the film was released on March 10, 2016.
action
October 1944, the German Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau finds itself in chaos and disintegration in the face of the approaching Soviet Red Army . The Jew Saul captured there works in a work detachment (Sonderkommando) , which has to carry out the cremation of the corpses of those murdered in the gas chambers. On the one hand, Saul is privileged because he is initially spared the gassing. On the other hand, it is also clear that the SS will also kill the members of the Sonderkommando so as not to leave any witnesses for the mass murder. The Jewish religion actually prohibits Jews from cremating the dead. One day Saul discovers the body of a boy in which he believes he recognizes his son. Later he tries to save the boy's body from being cremated and wants to find a rabbi to arrange a secret burial for him. At precisely that time, the other members of the Sonderkommando organized an uprising to forestall the imminent liquidation of the concentration camp and thus their own murder. They're destroying the crematorium. Saul pursues straightforwardly and without fear of his own death but only his own plan to pay his son the last honor, for whom he never had the opportunity to stand up before. In the tumult of the dissolution, some prisoners manage to escape into the surrounding forest. The rabbi turns out to be wrong and Saul loses the body in the river. Together with other prisoners, he escapes to a small hut. When he exchanges views with a peasant boy passing by, Saul smiles for the first and only time in the film. The child runs away and the camp SS guards approach the hut. Then the picture turns black and gun shots can be heard.
Historical background
In the Anglo-Saxon region in the post-war period, three reports that the government agencies of the United States had received about the Auschwitz concentration camp and the factory killing taking place there and were supposed to inform them and their superiors were called Auschwitz Protocols . There were three different uprisings of the prisoners abused by the SS as Sonderkommandos ( Treblinka II near Warsaw on August 2, 1943 , Sobibor camp near Lublin on October 14, 1943 and Auschwitz II on October 7, 1944 ).
With the exception of the doctor Miklós Nyiszli (1901–1956; portrayed by Sándor Zsótér), the film roles do not correspond to any verifiable persons in the literature or the traditional oral reports about the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz.
production
Rod
The direction was taken over by László Nemes , who also wrote the screenplay for the film together with Clara Royer . In an interview, Nemes himself spoke about his idea of telling what happened from the point of view of a single Auschwitz prisoner: "... bring the viewer closer to the action than just paying attention to the action." Nemes wanted what happened from one point of view Perceiving individuals, because so far (in films about the extermination of the Jews) the individual has always been lost in the collective of the victims.
Film music
The score was composed by László Melis . The soundtrack to the film consists in some places of screams and groaned words in Russian, Yiddish, Hungarian, Polish or German.
publication
The film was released in selected US cinemas on December 18, 2015 and in German cinemas on March 10, 2016. The statement that only the Hungarian doctor Miklos Nyiszly is the only verifiable historical person in the film is not correct. In the film, the actor's name is the kapo "Mietek Morawa" of the Sonderkommando (Morawa, Mieczyslaw, Mietek). He is documented as a real member of the Sonderkommando in the book "Special Treatment" (Verlag Steinhausen, Munich 1979) by Filip Müller, Slovak prisoner of the Sonderkommando and survivor. He was shot dead by the SS on April 3, 1945 in Mauthausen concentration camp as a witness to the crimes.
reception
Reviews
Frank Schnelle from epd Film describes the filmmaker's work: “The way in which director László Nemes stages this event is new and unique.” However, Schnelle also remarks: “In fact, nobody will 'like to see this film '- it is too much of an ordeal for that, too painful in its intensity. But this is precisely where its tremendous power lies: not just to remember the unimaginable cruelty of the concentration camp, but to make the conditions - the anxiety, the panic, the incomprehensible violence - almost physically tangible with the help of a very unique film language. "
Susan Vahabzadeh in their criticisms in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Verena Lueken in the FAZ counter this with the accusation that the reference to violence by the SS is used as a marketing tool for film sales such as pornography . The much acclaimed praise for the film by Claude Lanzmann and the film juries cannot therefore be followed. In the film cycle "Shoa", Claude Lanzmann documented, among other things, the events and the eyewitness report of the survivor of the Sonderkommando Filip Müller, which the latter summarized in his book "Special Treatment" (Verlag Steinhausen, Munich 1979). The film "Son of Saul" complements previous knowledge of literary or cinematic documentations very graphically and helps to make the unbelievable horror visually perceptible, but this is difficult to bear emotionally and (although it happened) eludes the human imagination in parts. In this overall context, it is all the more indispensable documentation for future generations.
For the critic Daniel Kothenschulte in the Frankfurter Rundschau , Son of Saul is “one of the very few artistically relevant films on this topic.” Among other things, it highlights the tone (“sounds of ghostly directness”) and specifics of the film camera and the Materials emerge that ensure that the pictorial space can never be fully seen. But “since the command to look, which is inherent in classic cinema and which is always expressed in the same grammar of shot and reverse shot, is missing, one sees all the more intensely. You look like in a terrible dream at a canvas on which brown and green tones are blurred with flesh tones. "
In an essay for the literary magazine die horen , the Hungarian philosopher Ágnes Heller writes : “[I come] from the cinema and know that I have seen an important, yes, a great film. A film in which nothing can be taken for granted, which has secrets, in which there is a lot to think about and interpret. [...] For me, the film alienates actual, unique experiences and turns them into mythology through alienation, among other things. "
Awards
The film won the Oscar for best foreign language film as a Hungarian contribution . At the Golden Globe Awards 2016 he won the award for best foreign language film.
In 2016, Son of Saul was ranked 34th in a BBC poll of the 100 most important films of the 21st century .
See also
- The Gray Area by Tim Blake Nelson (director, 2001; the script also refers to the 1946 report by Miklós Nyiszli )
literature
- Gideon Greif : We wept without tears ... eyewitness reports from the Jewish 'Sonderkommando' in Auschwitz. Cologne 1995; New edition Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-13914-7 ; Translations: Jerusalem 1999 (Hebrew); Warsaw 2002 (Polish); New Haven 2003 (English).
- Gideon Greif: Uprising in Auschwitz. The revolt of the Jewish “Sonderkommando” on October 7, 1944. With the collaboration of Itamar Levin. Translated from the Hebrew by Beatrice Greif. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-412-22473-8 .
- Miklós Nyiszli: In the beyond humanity. A coroner in Auschwitz. Edited by Friedrich Herber. Berlin, Dietz, 2005. ISBN 3-320-02061-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for Son of Saul . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF).
- ^ The 2015 Official Selection . In: Cannes . Retrieved April 16, 2015.
- ↑ Screenings Guide . In: Festival de Cannes . May 6, 2015. Archived from the original on June 26, 2015. Retrieved on May 8, 2015.
- ^ Henry Barnes: Cannes 2015: Jacques Audiard's Dheepan wins the Palme d'Or - as it happened . In: The Guardian . May 24, 2015. Accessed May 24, 2015.
- ↑ Toronto to open with 'Demolition'; world premieres for 'Trumbo', 'The Program' . In: ScreenDaily . July 28, 2015. Retrieved July 28, 2015.
- ↑ Almost 700 visitors experience the film "Son of Saul", which the Claims Conference showed on the occasion of the Holocaust Remembrance Day in Berlin. . claimscon.de.
- ^ Georges Didi-Huberman: Images in Spite of All. Four Photographs from Auschwitz. University of Chicago Press, 2008; first published as Images malgré tout. Les Éditions de Minuit, 2003.
- ^ Johanna Adorján: Interview with Oscar winner. A primitive form of resistance. Features of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from March 8, 2016.
- ↑ Frank Schnelle: Review of Son of Saul. In: epd-film.de. February 25, 2016.
- ↑ Susan Vahabzadeh: Pornography of Pain. In: sueddeutsche.de. March 9, 2016.
- ↑ Verena Lueken: Auschwitz shouldn't look good. In: FAZ.net. March 9, 2016.
- ↑ Daniel Kothenschulte: Sounds in the Chaos of Horror. In: fr-online.de. March 9, 2016.
- ↑ Ágnes Heller: Son of Saul, twice. In: die horen , H. 264, Ed. Agnes Relle, Göttingen 2016, pp. 142–146.
- ↑ Academy Awards 2016. An overview of the nominations . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . January 14, 2016. Retrieved January 14, 2016.
- ^ Scott Roxborough: Oscars: Hungary Selects 'Son of Saul' for Foreign-Language Category . In: The Hollywood Reporter . June 11, 2015. Accessed June 11, 2015.
- ^ 9 Foreign Language Films Advance In Oscar® Race . In: Oscars . December 17, 2015. Accessed December 18, 2015.
- ↑ Budapest Zeitung :: Another Oscar for Hungary after 35 years. In: www.budapester.hu. Retrieved June 29, 2016 .