In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I found this film almost as difficult to review as I did to watch. I guess many of us might fail to imagine the horrors of trying to survive Auschwitz on a minute by minute never mind hourly or daily basis but this film puts you almost literally on the shoulders of one man in the camp as the camera only rarely changes perspective from his subjective viewpoint to a more objective position so that you see what he sees and experience what he experiences. Immediately you sense the dehumanization of the individual as with him and his specially chosen fit and able fellow POW's he performs the task of removing, burning and disposing of the remains of the hundreds of daily gas victims there. When he sees a young boy somehow survive the gassing only to be even more cruelly murdered by suffocation by the German doctor on the scene, he impulsively decides to take the boy's dead body and have it consecrated by a rabbi.Along the way he gets involved in a mass escape attempt by his fellow inmates but even then carries the boy's corpse with him as he moves. As I said, the movie was excruciating to watch at tine. Think of all the famous (or infamous) cultural or artistic depictions of hell by the likes of Dante, Hyronemus Bosch Picasso, Goya and others.

Okay pros first: technically this is an excellent film. Cinematography gives it a truly claustrophobic and confusing feel. You really feel like you're the main character in an utterly horrible place that you can't escape and don't really understand. It's something I haven't seen in a holocaust - not really in any - film before.Many people have said how the film is about the protagonist trying to find some piece of humanity in a horrific place. But the film is not about humanity, it's about insanity. The protagonist has gone insane - and I don't blame him considering that situation he's in. For me the problem is that you have to follow this insane unsympathetic character trying to complete his insane task for the whole 1h 40min. He is getting his comrades killed, he's risking their escape plan and generally acting like an asshole just to find a rabbi to bury a boy he thinks is his son.What really worries me is that Saul is caring more about one dead person than a bunch of living ones and people call that humane.

The debut feature film from Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes, SON OF SAUL wins Oscar's BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE PICTURE in 2016, it is a hard-nosed Holocaust drama takes a unique focal point of one particular Sonderkommando (Nazi's death camp inmates who are chosen to dispense with gas chamber victims), the Jewish-Hungarian Saul Ausländer (Röhrig, sometimes feels stilted but overall quite an endeavor from a non-professional).From the word go, Nemes' discreet modality of entirely putting Saul at the center stage grandly comes home to the audience, starting from an out of focus shot slowly clings to its object Saul, our visual cynosure, then meticulously follows his steps (a back-of-his-head vantage point) and only shows us what is happening strictly from his prospect, it is an intriguing and contained ploy, on one hand, the film waives a holistic view of the happenings, for fear that the uncompromising atrocity it scrupulously re-enacts is too much for viewers to bear, thus mercifully we are only presented with glimpses through Saul's constant movement, who seems to be strung-out yet benumbed, most of the time, he keeps to himself; on the other hand, the skimpy scenes are no less soul-stirring, the gas chamber, piles of naked cadavers, incinerators, dumping truckloads of ashes, the rampant slaughter, the whole package is there (a sterling job for its production designer, the Hungarian architect László Rajk Jr.), selectively materializes predicated upon Saul's presence, one indubitable merit of Nemes' picture is it has miraculously re-created a reliving the horror experience that possibly errs on the side of being so vicarious that one is instinctively repelled and tries to turn away from it. That is an inextricable dilemma of any film, cinema aims to engross, however, when the subject it depicts is inherently repugnant and horrendous to a fault, as a result we are often mired between these two disparate states, a self-inflicted masochism. Is there any redeeming grace to temper the milieu's inhuman brutality and its overlaying smothering? Yes, there must be, it is Saul's spur-of-the-moment decision to carry out a proper Jewish burial for a boy who dies after barely surviving the gas chamber and whom he claims to fellow inmates is his son (is it true? the answer is deliberately moot, but one inclines to nay, which makes Saul's action more perverse and improbable, maybe he thinks the boy's ephemeral survival is a numinous call for his action), so the imperative mission for him is to find a rabbi to officiate the burial, meantime, chivvied by Abraham (Molnár), another Sonderkommand, he is also embroiled into an impending uprising as their last attempt to scupper their imminent doomsday, but Saul is halfhearted. Granted that Saul's intransigency gravely compromises his contribution to the nobler/righteous cause (to an extent that he will lose those precious smuggled gun powders, and volunteer his own demise just to find a rabbi during the infernal pandemonium), the film perilously threats to negate its own raison d'être, which is to retain an infinitesimal trace of faith and courage to survive under such egregious monstrosities in the manifestation of defiance, Jews are being decimated, but their culture and rituals are deathless. In the end of the day, Saul's effort is futile, the rabbi he rescues is a sham, the body fails to be pushing up the daisies and when the camera finally veers from Saul after his hard-earned smile, what manifests is not a glint of hope but a consolation or a surrender only too soon will be rendered insignificant, ambiguity again takes an upper hand in this harrowing exploitation of the Holocaust, for all its calculated aesthetics, its impact is confounding and its laurels are undue.

The Oscar-winning Hungarian Holocaust movie "Son of Saul" has received a bountiful of critical and award love. I don't wanna sound like a sour grape, but this sour movie did not move me at all; you want more Saul on your entertainment taste, "Better Call Saul" instead. In all seriousness, "Son of Saul" stars Geza Rohrig as Saul, a 1944 Auschwitz Jewish prisoner who is forced to burn corpses of his own people. Saul is presented with a dilemma when he sees his son is in the group next in line to be incinerated. Saul then goes on a conquest for his son not to be one of them. He takes heavy risks, connives his allies, all the works really for his son not to be put in flames. Director Lazlo Nemes shoots the picture in close proximity with the lead character, which I found it to be very irritating instead of capturing. I was trying to be Finding Nemes in Nemes' chronological work, but it seems this was his first real picture; and it showed. I am sorry to say nothing struck me profoundly in "Son of Saul"; not the directing, the writing, nor the acting. And yes, I do think it's extremely overrated. But maybe, me who is the Son of Jose (dad's name) just did not see "Son of Saul" the way others did. ** Needs Improvement