Röhrig, a poet as well as an actor, is fascinating in his opacity. The movie is at once clinical in its accumulation of small details and dreamlike in its execution, a waking nightmare through which Saul somnambulates, the audience right alongside him. The narrow, box-like frame of the film emphasizes a profound sense of claustrophobia and containment. Nemes uses shallow focus both to keep the audiences’ eyes on his protagonist and to keep the horrors surrounding him-the arbitrary executions, the ever-present corpses-at a slight remove that’s simultaneously humane and disconcerting. The camera hugs him close throughout almost the entire film, peering over his shoulder such that it presents the camp from his perspective while keeping his face (and the large red X on his back that marks him as Sonderkommando) in the frame. We watch them shovel coal for the ovens we watch them shovel human ashes into a river. Afterward, we watch them drag out the naked bodies and scrub down the floors for victims yet to come. When the doors close, we watch them immediately begin to collect the belongings of the doomed, even as the latter begin to scream inside. We watch as the Sonderkommando herd unknowing victims into the “showers,” while German officers promise a hot meal on the other side. Son of Saul is the debut film of the 38-year-old director László Nemes, and it is a work of remarkable power, a chilling investigation into the intimate mechanics of mass murder. Saul has seen the dead body of a boy he believes to have been his son: In volunteering to take responsibility for the corpse, he is setting in motion a plan-one which will serve as the central thread of the film-to spare the boy from the ovens and give him a proper Jewish burial.

Yet given their context, the words are also a gesture of quiet defiance. In this sense, Saul’s “I will,” is merely the acquiescence of the enslaved, the acceptance of yet another in an endless series of grotesque duties.

Though the status was presented by the Nazis as a privilege-the Sonderkommando could remain alive somewhat longer than their condemned brethren-it was in fact a deeper curse: They, too, would be exterminated in a matter of time, but only after being forced to collude in their own genocide.

Saul is a member of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz, the Jewish prisoners who were tasked with escorting their fellow Jews into the death chambers and disposing of their corpses afterward. Emily in Paris Is the Last Guilty Pleasure Spencer Kornhaber

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