Okay pros first: technically this is an excellent film. Cinematography gives it a truly claustrophobic and confusing feel. You really feel like you're the main character in an utterly horrible place that you can't escape and don't really understand. It's something I haven't seen in a holocaust - not really in any - film before.Many people have said how the film is about the protagonist trying to find some piece of humanity in a horrific place. But the film is not about humanity, it's about insanity. The protagonist has gone insane - and I don't blame him considering that situation he's in. For me the problem is that you have to follow this insane unsympathetic character trying to complete his insane task for the whole 1h 40min. He is getting his comrades killed, he's risking their escape plan and generally acting like an asshole just to find a rabbi to bury a boy he thinks is his son.What really worries me is that Saul is caring more about one dead person than a bunch of living ones and people call that humane.

I won't spend too much time on this review other than to say that, with an IMDb rating of 7.5, I expected a much better movie.I quite understand why the director invested so much time and effort in trying to engage the viewer in the main character's view of the atrocity that must have been life in one of the Germans' extermination camps during WWII. The message was conveyed loud and clear that survival for Saul and those like him was a minute by minute matter. Alive this minute and with a bullet in the brain the next if he even looked at one of the SS Officers or guards.Having said that I understand the reasons for trying to engage the audience by use of very unusual cinematography, I must say that I found the idea of looking at the back of Saul's head for almost the entire length of the movie, with everything else around him being thrown out of focus was, after about ten minutes, not only distracting but also extremely annoying. Of course there's a morbid fascination even these days at what the Nazis did during WWII, and it is true that we've seen similar movies made many times over the years. But rarely has a movie on this subject been so annoying and ultimately unsatisfying.I wanted to like this movie "Son Of Saul" but I just couldn't forgive it the infuriating lack of focus on the events that were going on around Saul, rather than on the back of his head and its small and insignificant place in the camp.JMV

This is the first time i write a review, but because this movie is so bad, i really believe in the Oscar hype, but oh my...The Plot is total nonsense, no character develop, no proper dialogue, total frenzy shots, i know is a death camp and the camera moves with the flow of the situation, but, the main character is so cold, like an iceberg, i mean they're already death from been there but he just can't let go the corpse of a child, he clings so much for it that it start to be really annoying. I don't recommend anybody to see this movie, is just a pretentious film, time that will not go back in your life, if you wanna see a really good film about concentration camps, go see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but not this, i really mean it.

The Oscar-winning Hungarian Holocaust movie "Son of Saul" has received a bountiful of critical and award love. I don't wanna sound like a sour grape, but this sour movie did not move me at all; you want more Saul on your entertainment taste, "Better Call Saul" instead. In all seriousness, "Son of Saul" stars Geza Rohrig as Saul, a 1944 Auschwitz Jewish prisoner who is forced to burn corpses of his own people. Saul is presented with a dilemma when he sees his son is in the group next in line to be incinerated. Saul then goes on a conquest for his son not to be one of them. He takes heavy risks, connives his allies, all the works really for his son not to be put in flames. Director Lazlo Nemes shoots the picture in close proximity with the lead character, which I found it to be very irritating instead of capturing. I was trying to be Finding Nemes in Nemes' chronological work, but it seems this was his first real picture; and it showed. I am sorry to say nothing struck me profoundly in "Son of Saul"; not the directing, the writing, nor the acting. And yes, I do think it's extremely overrated. But maybe, me who is the Son of Jose (dad's name) just did not see "Son of Saul" the way others did. ** Needs Improvement