El hijo de Saúl

Filmová výzva 2018 - Hungría. Por mucho tiempo, y tal vez nunca antes, había visto una película filmada de una manera que absolutamente no me agradaba y me dolían los ojos al verla. ¿Cuál era el propósito? Para hacerme sentir como un espectador dentro de algún juego de computadora sugestivo e idiota, donde en ningún momento sé qué me espera, porque todo a mi alrededor se ve borroso y solo escucho rugidos y ruidos. Aquí no me encontré en absoluto con el director. Se me confirmó que dentro del Grupo de Visegrád, Hungría es la más débil en el ámbito cinematográfico. (09.04.2018)

Una inteligente combinación de planos casi subjetivos, que nos meten en la historia a lo documental, y del ambiente de terror del infierno de la vida real, que probablemente nadie quiera vivir tan de cerca. Ninguna otra palabra que no sea «infierno» es más adecuada para las escenas nocturnas por las fosas. Un impresionante debut del director húngaro. Si no ha visto La zona gris y no conoce el término «Sonderkommando», esta película le matará. (14.10.2015)

A movie without the past and the future, which will be (not only because of this) described as a holocaust-style Come and See (1985). Thanks to the chosen format of "long scenes over the shoulder", it is unusually intense, suggestive (amazing sound work!) and gets under you skin very quickly and for a long time. Maybe too much, because it's constantly moving and it is so dynamic that the viewer (nor the character) will be sitting on the edge of his char all the time. What can happen is that the viewer becomes used to it by the end of the movie, although the horrors during the Sonderkommando shift are shown "seemingly accidentally", are sidelined and presented as a daily routine. But as a result it is even more terrifying and disturbing. No matter whether you become used to it or not and whether you can get over it or not, it is indisputable that Saul's son is one of the exceptions confirming the rule that the film's qualities and the importance and urgency of the theme form one functional unit, which rightfully deserves "festival fame". If nothing else, it is because such a view of the film depiction of the Holocaust through the industrialization of death was desperately needed, because although these events are captured in literature from time to time they are almost never depicted in a movie. (10.10.2015)

The wiping of vomit and blood and the removal of fresh corpses from the just-used gas chamber, the precisely organized loading of those corpses into furnaces, the constant dumping of ashes into the river; people reduced to mere numerical units, "pieces", worthless waste – killing as a manufacturing process. Killing as a perfectly lubricated and thought-out machine, whose puppets and operators in one – sonderkommando – have prolonged their lives by at least a few months, and who carry the corpses with complacency, without emotions and emotional outpourings (what else is left for them), as if they were operating a machine tool. And in that darkness of inhumanity and filth, like a faint glimmer of humanity, there’s the desire of one of the sonderkommando to bury – as civilized society should – one dead boy. A film that everyone should watch. Especially the fucked up Nazi dumbasses, who I'm under no illusions would be moved, but if even just one in a thousand said to themselves "God, what an asshole I am!", this movie would make sense. Only an idiot can "get bored" or "fall asleep", as I have read here a few times, with this overwhelming experience. (29.02.2016)

(BE2CAN, Lucerna) I’m doubting between four, in recognition for its merits, and three for the experience. After all the hype from Cannes I was expecting more. It’s a different take on the monstrous machinery of the Holocaust from the point of view of a poor bastard who gets mixed up in it. The intention is clear, the execution is undoubtedly appropriate, but I’m not sure it’s enough for me in 107 minutes… (10.10.2015)