László Nemes keeps us beside people who cannot see or understand everything happening around them. Son of Saul is harrowing and worth the strain, even when his insistence on staying close begins to feel repetitive.
Fi1m perspective
The camera follows Saul Ausländer as he seeks a burial for a boy he believes is his son. In Son of Saul (2015), Nemes stays close to this Sonderkommando prisoner at Auschwitz, allowing little relief from his narrowing attention. We were horrified by the extermination continuing around him while he concentrates on that single task. Following Saul does not mean that we come to understand his determination easily. It is an exceptionally controlled film, and the strain it puts us under is largely earned.
His feature debut established the restricted viewpoint that he took into Sunset (2018), his second feature, set in Budapest before the First World War. That film also exposes a risk in his method: keeping us confused can become frustrating without bringing us any closer to a character. Orphan (2025), his third feature, moves to Budapest in 1957 and continues his interest in identity and trauma. Across these films, he keeps returning to what an individual can comprehend of the history happening around them.
Cinematographer Mátyás Erdély is a recurring collaborator in a cinema built around staying close to a single person. That makes the choice of actor particularly important, and Géza Röhrig holds our attention in Son of Saul even when the burial quest repeats itself. Nemes asks us to spend so much time following Saul that a less absorbing performance would make the camera’s persistence hard to bear. Röhrig gives us a reason to keep watching without making Saul’s purpose easier to accept.
The screenplay by Nemes and Clara Royer is where our reservation begins. Once we have understood how completely the burial has absorbed Saul, further urgency does not always tell us more about him. The following camera becomes predictable in those passages, and we start noticing the technique when our attention should be on the man. An occasional pause would help; the film is already exhausting enough without repeating a point it has made. Start with Son of Saul, but do not choose it for an evening when you need some relief.
Biography
László Nemes is a Hungarian film director and screenwriter. Born on 18 February 1977 in Budapest, he moved to Paris at the age of 12. He studied history, international relations and political science at the Institut d'Études Politiques before beginning work as an assistant director on short and feature films in France and Hungary.
He spent two years as assistant to director Béla Tarr, notably on The Man from London (2008). After completing several award-winning short films, including With a Little Patience (2007), Nemes made his feature debut with Son of Saul (2015), which he directed and co-wrote. The film won the Grand Prix at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. His subsequent features include Sunset (2018) and Orphan (2025).
