Géza Röhrig

In Son of Saul (2015), Géza Röhrig gives us little help in reading Saul Ausländer’s face. We keep looking for a response, because he offers so few that the smallest change might matter. László Nemes keeps us close to this prisoner without making him easier to understand. We were unsettled by his determination to bury the boy, because Röhrig never let us settle into admiring him for it. Even that apparently decent wish becomes troubling.

This was his breakthrough lead, with only a late-1980s Hungarian miniseries among his previous screen credits. It is a substantial performance on which to build a reputation, though an unusually concentrated one. Later parts include Shmuel in To Dust (2018) and Georges Loinger in Resistance (2020), continuing a film career often concerned with Jewish experience. The work we have reviewed gives us a firmer sense of his ability to sustain close scrutiny than of what he might do with a less severe lead.

The reservation is that we sometimes want the film to move on. The burial quest in Son of Saul begins to repeat itself, and Röhrig cannot make every return to the task feel necessary. He still holds our attention, which is no small achievement when the face remains so difficult to read. Nemes gives that performance sustained attention, trusting it to keep us watching without an easily understood response. The actor’s refusal to make Saul seem noble is particularly valuable in a story so open to sentimentality.

Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme (2025) gives him the supporting role of Béla Kletzki alongside Timothée Chalamet. We recommend the film for its table tennis matches and Chalamet’s performance, with a substantial caveat about its length. It is a different scale of assignment from Saul, in a film built around another actor. Begin with Son of Saul, but be prepared for the exhaustion of staying so close to a man who tells us so little.