Son of Saul (2015)
I won’t really recommend doing this as it will be quite a tough evening, but this film serves well as a double feature with The Zone of Interest. Going from planning meetings where the layout of a “factory” of genocide with humans as input and ashes at output, to this film where we see what that means in practice. Even though most things are blurred and happening in the background, we are still inside the gas chambers and crematory, in a way that I haven’t seen depicted like that before. Makes Schindler’s List almost cozy in comparison. Auschwitz being a place where all echoes of humanity is gone, where there is no moving forward towards a goal or even an idea of hope, to work as a film narrative we focus on Saul and his attempt at finding some purpose with trying to give a boy he thinks is son a proper burial. We can be mad at him for not making good decisions and sacrifice the living for the dead, but it is his way of making sense of the madness and his arc established a foothold for the viewer in that setting of meaninglessness. The only minor detail that draws a bit back for me, is that I am little to aware of the constructed reality - especially the sound work that does reveal itself as something that was added afterwards. This is hardly a criticism as The Zone of Interest did the exact same thing, and maybe that distance got to me a little bit harder, but this is undeniably a film that stays with you for a while.
Rating: 4.5