Feelgood movie of the year

In the final months before liberation by the Soviets, Hungarian Auschwitz inmate Saul (Geza Rohrig) is part of a special unit operating the gas chamber, extending his own fragile life by facilitating the murder of others. One day, a youthful corpse catches his eye, and he becomes possessed by the idea it is his son. He concocts a desperate plot to secure the body before it is cremated and provide a proper (clandestine) Jewish burial. This grim and quixotic journey endangers not only himself, but many of his closest peers in the camp, several of whom are preparing a Hail-Mary rebellion against their Nazi captors. Son of Saul is an ambitious, exhausting, and rigorous drama. It leaves almost no space for the type of sentimentality many abhor in Holocaust cinema by adhering to a close approximation of first-person subjectivity. Nearly every shot finds a wary Saul in focus while the nightmare in front of or behind him is obfuscated, represented mostly via intricate and thunderous sound design. There is no omniscient sermon nor are there the clichés we may expect, such as a conflicted-noble German, and Saul himself is more of a presence—a nervous energy, a gaunt figure in motion—than a traditional protagonist. The result's physical and intellectual impact outweighs its emotional resonance, but this is fine. It is a harsh, yet rewarding recreation of the concentration-camp experience as endured by one bruised man trying to fulfill a sacred duty in the face of vast evil.

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