The way in which a movie is shot can do a lot to set the tone. Wes Anderson played with the formatting in Grand Budapest Hotel, which all represented different eras. Director Xavier Dolan wanted to show the emotional state of the main character in Mommy by using a 4:3 format and only once using widescreen in order to show the feeling of liberation. Son of Saul, which is set during the second world war inside a concentration camp, immediately chooses its tone from the start. With a claustrophobic 4:3 format and only having the focus close to the camera, making everything far away blurry, you are glued to the main character, Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig).
This isn’t the first movie which is set in such a place, but it is a film which you won’t forget easily. Before watching it, you already know about the horror in these places, but because you now witness it from the viewpoint of you character it almost becomes a personal experience. You witness how efficiently the people who are coming into the camp are lead to the gas chambers, with the promise of warm food and work. You hear the screams of people dying and walk into the room with Saul when it is all done and he has to help cleaning up. Even though not everything is in focus, it is because of that fact you use your imagination to fill in the rest of the horrible things which are taking place.
But Son of Saul isn’t only a story about the concentration camps, but also one about hope. Saul finds someone between the victims, who he thinks is his son. From that moment on he does everything in order to get him buried instead of burnt and it keeps him going, despite the horrible events taking place around him.
It’s important that we remember what happened to other human beings during the second world war (and unfortunately still is happening in various countries) and Son of Saul gives you a closeup of that. It is a movie you won´t be able to forget and you´ll think about days after you´ve seen it. Saul is a character who´s life is a living hell in which he has to work in order to stay alive and it is within that place he still finds hope, even if it could lead to his own death. Earlier this year The Revenant showed how one man is able to keep going despite big obstacles and this movie also manages to show that. It´s an important film everyone should have seen.
Totally agree with everything you said. The way it was shot was so good, you should check out the youtube video where the director explains that mental opening scene. The barks of German orders, subtitled, is pretty damned scary!
Great post!