#Son of Saul

[fnipoli]

[rwpohl]

historische postkarten: 1. weltkrieg, mazedonien 1916-18 (shared folder)

[byneddiedingo]

Géza Röhrig and Amitai Kedar in Son of Saul (László Nemes, 2015)

Cast: Géza Röhrig. Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn, Sándor Zsoter, Marcin Czernik, Uwe Lauer, Christian Hartin, Mihály Kormos, Amitai Kedar. Screenplay: László Nemes, Clara Royer. Cinematography: Mátyás Erdély. Production design: László Rajk. Film editing: Matthieu Taponier. Music: László Melis. 

Son of Saul begins with an out-of-focus figure walking across a field toward the camera until he finally comes into focus. This is Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig), a Sonderkommando -- a Jewish prisoner tasked with clean-up duties in a Nazi death camp. In a bravura sequence, the camera stays focused on Saul in near-closeup as it tracks what he is doing: helping herd naked people into the "showers" where they are gassed, rifling through their belongings that they have neatly hung up in an anteroom (they were, in a particularly sadistic stroke, told to remember the numbers of the hooks on which they hung their clothes and to hurry their showers because the promised soup is getting cold), then helping take the bodies (referred to by the Nazis as "die Stücke," or "pieces") to the crematorium, and scrubbing the floors in the gas chamber. It's a sequence made more horrifying by the fact that all of these events take place in the slightly out-of-focus background as the camera concentrates on Saul. But something out of the ordinary happens: A boy is found still alive in the gas chamber, and Saul recognizes him. He will later tell others that the boy is his son, from a liaison with a woman not his wife, which explains the unusual interest he takes in this particular victim: When the boy is sent to the doctors, he is smothered to death by an SS officer who then orders an autopsy to try to explain why he survived the gas. Saul, who witnesses this murder, persuades a sympathetic doctor to hold off on the autopsy and keep the body from being cremated. Saul's efforts to hide the body and to find a rabbi who can perform a ritual burial form the rest of the film's narrative. He is aided in his efforts but sometimes also resisted by other prisoners, who are plotting a rebellion against the guards. It's an extraordinarily harrowing film that won the foreign language film Oscar and numerous critics society awards. Remarkably, it's also writer-director László Nemes's first feature film, and Röhrig, on whom the camera is focused for virtually the entire time, had only a Hungarian TV miniseries made in 1989 as an acting credit. Like many films about the Holocaust it runs the risk of turning its subject into melodrama or of desensitizing the audience to the depicted horrors. It doesn't quite avoid the risk -- there are times when Saul's implacable determination tests our credulity, and there is always the awareness that these are "just actors" portraying things that happened to real people -- but it's an honorable contribution to a difficult genre.

[harrison-abbott]

The filmmakers made sure that the camera never went beyond Saul’s sentient perspective. Everything we see in the film is from his own field of sight, sound or physical proximity.

The movie drew from five month’s worth of sound recordings from eight different languages. These were then attached to the original recording of the cut.

Director Laszlo Nemes originally wanted to make it as a French film with a French main character. But it was turned down by producers in France, Israel and Germany because it was deemed too threatening. He found the solution in Hungary.

It was shot entirely with a 40mm lens to portray a sense of claustrophobia.

[nk-salinger]

[scarliefrancis]

What about my son?

— BETTER CALL SAUL 6.09: Fun and Games

[idyllphile]

appreciation post for Nacho and his cute little work uniform <3

[shoshiwrites]

callum turner i am in your walls

also

[papa-evershed]

Rob James-Collier as Saul Silva FATE: THE WINX SAGA

[jesse-pinko]

Mike Ehrmantraut is the most heartbreaking character of all time precisely because he is an unflinching mercenary criminal. Whose one weakness is that he never stopped being a dad even after his son was dead

[kjoadrien]

Everybody Wins

[seizethedeansofproduction]

the holy trinity of lawyers for losers

[rwpohl]

der veruntreute himmel, ernst marischka 1958

[polktd]

i need nacho and jesse to meet because it would implode my brain

[ziracona]

Mike missing his shot to kill Hector and change the trajectory of his life and stay the man he wanted to be, because Ignacio got in the way and he wouldn’t shoot through him

Mike missing his shot to kill Walt and change the trajectory of his life from death to anything else, because Jessie got in the way and he wouldn’t shoot through him

[eroguron0nsense]

Luffy and Garp after Marineford, Egghead

Minor, very vague spoilers for Egghead I have been pretty vocal in the past about my simultaneous fascination with/visceral hatred of Monkey D. Garp but I spend a lot of time wondering about how Luffy feels toward him nowadays. How he must feel knowing that his grandfather had a hundred different opportunities to defect, to resist, to try and intervene in some capacity to save his brother, and Garp didn't do shit until it was much, much too late aside from acquiesce after mild resistance and feel sorry for himself. That complete strangers and former enemies cared more for him, were willing to risk so much more to help him, than his flesh and blood, the man who "raised" him and his brother, the man who claimed in some fucked up neglectful capacity to love and want the best for them. Just sitting there on the goddamn platform watching things unfold, stewing in a misery he made for himself and a conflict of love and duty that shouldn't be a conflict at all, unable to do a thing for these wonderful, kind, innocent goddamn children, these beautiful kids who bring light to everyone they meet, who he took in and vowed to protect, out of some disgusting misguided sense of duty to a fascist military. That this horrendous thing that killed his brother and ruined the lives of multiple people he loves meant more to Garp than either of his grandchildren ever did. I wonder how Luffy's going to feel knowing that if/when he hears about Garp was willing to do to save Coby in Egghead. I can't imagine he'll ever want to see Garp again, or be able to forgive him, but Luffy knowing that his Grandfather would risk so much more for his friend than either of them when they needed him, when one of them was dying–even though he'd likely never hold it against Coby–is such a horrible thing to imagine