Was he autistic?
>>66876295
that movie sucked
goes through the Holocaust movie cliche checklist, neatly ticking off every box
filmed like a video game which is pretty intellectually suspicious and morally questionable
becomes a cliche thriller and has absolutely nothing new at all to offer to depictions of the Holocaust
Shoah is way more disturbing and it doesn't have a single moment of actual footage of the Holocaust
>>66876348
>neatly ticking off every box
Like what?
>filmed like a video game which is pretty intellectually suspicious and morally questionable
If the first thing that comes to mind when you see a tracking shot from the back is video games, then the problem is with you not the cinematography.
>becomes a cliche thriller and has absolutely nothing new at all to offer to depictions of the Holocaust
A thriller? Did we watch the same movie?
>>66876443
as in every image that we've come to associate with the Holocaust is shown to us just as we expect we'll be shown. it brought no new imagery to the Holocaust and just felt like a bland recitation of what everybody expected.
also, if you're pretending that the movie indulges in the occasional tracking shot then you don't know anything about photography. the entire movie apes the style of the Dardenne brothers except this time nearly every single shot is over-the-shoulder as it follows a character around who is barely more than a vacuous cipher. the whole movie feels like a video game as the guy has to move from struggle to struggle to try to get to a rabbi and then to a body that may be his son's. the movie then climaxes with a ludicrously over-the-top chase scene that apes Spielberg's movies. also, do you really feel as though there's nothing wrong with a Holocaust movie becoming an exciting edge of your seat thriller? it feels like such a stupid cop out I couldn't believe it.
and I'm not alone in my thoughts at all there mate. a huge wealth of criticism is online questioning the movie's quasi-video game aesthetics.
watch Shoah or Night and Fog if you want an actual quality Holocaust movie that isn't just about "whoa look at how visceral this movie is."
please tell me why you think Son of Saul should exist. what does it give us? what's its point?
>>66876718
>as in every image that we've come to associate with the Holocaust is shown to us
How stupid. Because one of the unique aspects of the movie is that most of the horrors aren't directly shown, they are always in the background, blurry and rushed. If you didn't know about the gas chambers etc. you would be pretty lost about what's going on in the first half hour or so.
>also, if you're pretending that the movie indulges in the occasional tracking shot then you don't know anything about photography.
Never said it was occasional. But it's really telling about where you're coming from if video games is the only thing you can compare muddled tracking shots in portrait mode to.
>the entire movie apes the style of the Dardenne brothers
Felt more like an Alan Clark film to me. Are you referring to the Dardennes' style of close-up emphasis on the human figures? Because they're also aping someone else's style, namely Bresson's.
>the whole movie feels like a video game as the guy has to move from struggle to struggle to try to get to a rabbi and then to a body that may be his son's.
Criticizing a movie for showing the point of view of a man is useless, especially in this movie where it really becomes one man's stubborn quest to shed humanity in the middle of inhumanity, paradoxically by honoring the dead. And it becomes pretty clear in time that the body isn't that of his son's. Maybe you should pay attention more rather than think about video games so much.
>a huge wealth of criticism is online questioning the movie's quasi-video game aesthetics.
Point me to this huge wealth. inb4 letterboxd reviews.
>watch Shoah or Night and Fog if you want an actual quality Holocaust movie that isn't just about "whoa look at how visceral this movie is."
Right. And should I just watch Military Channel specials if I want to watch works of art about war? Documentaries can hardly breach questions about the human condition the way fiction does.
>>66876718
>please tell me why you think Son of Saul should exist. what does it give us? what's its point?
For starters, it's a story about creating meaning, however stupid and hopeless it might seem to an outsider, in the face of bleak despair.
>G-guys they're figuring out that its mathematically impossible to cremate that many bodies one at a time in small ovens.
>Quick make a movie where they use oven troughs full of people.
Don't you forget goy.
>>66877217
that is an incredibly limp idea that could have been conveyed, and has been, in many other films in any other kind of surrounding. why would the movie have to be set in the Holocaust in order to explore this idea? tell me what it is that Son of Saul brings that is at all unique to the representation of the Holocaust on film. taking on the Holocaust is a weighty task, one that should probably be left alone if it isn't going to be used to express something meaningfully and to grapple with the tragedy in a significant way.
when I said a "body that may be his son's" I am referring to the ambiguity that the film deliberately holds on to. of course it becomes likely that it may not be his son but the idea that it becomes clear is absolutely foolish as that would take away one of the movie's only glimmers of quality in its depiction of Saul as a man seeking a way to absolve guilt, of making meaning out of chaos, or of possibly given into the madness around him and losing sense of himself.
as for significant attacks that have been launched against the movie you can see Reverse Shot (for my money the best critics out there) who have thrashed it the hardest, Manohla Dargis of the nytimes who calls the movie "intellectually repellent," which may be overstating the case but not by too much, Film Comment, Slant, Keith Ulrich, and Cinema Scope also all ripped it pretty hard.
If you read much criticism you'll know that the above sources are some of the absolute best out there so you may want to read them and consider their words more seriously than you're taking mine.
The film to me felt like 12 Years a Slave by way of Inarritu. A movie with barely any ideas that is essentially used as a means for a filmmaker to flex his cinematic muscle with an admittedly virtuous display of technical ability. The entire issue with the film in my view is that the style of the film in no way matches its subject matter.
It's a fraud mate.
>>66877486
*virtuosic
>>66877486
That's only the main theme that I saw in the movie, an individual trying to gain meaning in a dire situation. You are essentially squabbling over a moot point - "Why should this have been like this and not like this?" - that can be asked of any narrative. Son of Saul felt original for exactly that reason, because most Holocaust films focus on the groups and the victims as a whole, while the film here is focused, and entirely so, on the individual. Many times he goes against what the group is doing and he is chastised as well. In this, the movie is an existential drama at heart, something that is rare to see in the middle of an event that affected entire populations and ethnic groups. The "video game" aesthetics (which by the way, only Reverse Shot explicitly mentions) that is drawing ire of so many critics for some reason is used here to address the plight of the individual struggle against the larger forces, be it the machinery of the death camp or the growing rebellion among the inmates. Saul wants to neither be a corpse in the gas chamber, nor an active participant in a resistance, he only wants to carry out an act that always seems to be senseless throughout the film, but which to him carries meaning in the greater senseless of the world around that is harsh and meaningless. This the most radical thing that Nemes does and which is causing so much butthurt apparently because god forbid anyone try to attempt to visualize the singularity of a man's vision and self-made purpose in cinema rather than offer a tear jerking prayer for the collective. Even Nemes knew what he was going for because one of his acceptance speeches at an awards ceremony was to thank the people who chose the film for understanding that an event like the Holocaust can't be just about large numbers and swathes of bodies but can equally and powerfully be about the struggle of one person against an uncaring world.
>>66877486
By the way, copying a published review word for word doesn't help strengthen your argument, you know.
I haven't see this movie anywhere. Where did you guys seen it?
>>66878032
again, there is nothing new in what Nemes is doing. After the Holocaust the entire meaning of art in all forms began to alter. People struggled with how they could make new works of art after seeing such an incomprehensible tragedy occur that so degraded human beings past any point we thought we were capable of sinking to.
Even a movie as awful as Life as Beautiful was about one man in an uncaring world right? It just seems ridiculous to me that you think the movie needs to be set in the Holocaust in order for that point to be communicated. Another movie that captures that point far more persuasively is Fincher's Zodiac, which actually has a head on its shoulders unlike Son of Saul.
I'm still curious about your take on the movie's attempts at titillation and exhilaration, used throughout but nowhere more ridiculously than in the final stretch of the movie.
Ultimately Saul barely has any character at all. The entire limp, pretty maudlin plot seems to only be in service of the movie's aesthetics.
Anyway, we clearly don't agree on this movie at all so I don't think we're going to go much further than we've come already. It's an interesting movie to talk about but I do think there needs to be a consideration of the ethics of the way the movie presents itself.
What is especially confusing to me is that the director of Shoah, Claude Lanzmann, heaped praise on the movie which seems bizarre in light of the fact that it's almost entirely against what his movie tried to accomplish. One of the reviews I linked made this point and it seemed apt to me as well.
Anyway, I've basically already forgotten much of Son of Saul. It had hardly any impact on me at all.
>>66878975
I really don't understand why you have such a problem with having a story that is about finding meaning in a meaningless world be set in one of the famous acts of calculated slaughter in recent history. Your example of Zodiac can just as easily be dismissed. Why a few San Francisco killings rather than something that deals with more mundane things like say, in A Serious Man? If the idea of realism is what you're aiming for in this questioning, surely a film about divorce and challenges in your professional life would be more resonant that a mystery about a murderer, right? All these films are asking the same questions but like I said, it's fucking stupid to go asking why this and not this. And as I said before, this movie struck me a lot less titillating with the Holocaust setting than most movies that deal with this. Saul is at the forefront, visually and thematically at all times. The killings and all the other horrors are there but they are in the background, lost in the noise and what probably was the monotony of his few months of drudgery, until something that looked like a miracle happened and he took it upon himself to find renewed purpose in his sad little doomed life. This issue that you have with the last part being "ridiculous". How? You keep on repeating that but you have no substance to back that up, much like most of the dribble you've taken the time to write and I've unfortunately taken the time to read. All your argument consists of are repeating the few Rotten reviews you've read. Perhaps much like Saul, this inane contrarianism is the only way you inject meaning into your life? Perhaps that's why you didn't like the film. And you bring up a curious point, that Lanzmann praised the film so much. Really goes to show how the few critics you so champion (and shamelessly copy) are so far removed from what the artists you support really think about this movie.
>>66876295
What did he mean by this?
>>66876348
>filmed like a video game
>>>/v/
