A Holocaust movie surprisingly becomes a topical subject in Thailand, after the highly publicised, highly embarrassing incident of a Thai aristocrat's grand denial of that historical tragedy (and a subsequent rebuttal by an Israeli ambassador).
Here on the third day of Festival de Cannes, the horror is played out in a tense, sometimes chaotic, maddeningly relentless "Son of Saul", a Hungarian film set in Auschwitz - or precisely, in the horrific slaughterhouse of the gas chambers - that focuses solely from the point of view of one Jewish man. "Son of Saul", by first-time director Laszlo Nemes, is a pointedly divisive film (you have one or two of them every year in Cannes' main competition), with some praising its intense vision, while others seeing manipulative pummeling that exploits the massacre as a backdrop. Anyway, this is a Holocaust movie that will be hotly debated in the months to come.
Almost the entire film, we're forced to hover close to Saul - very close, in fact, with the camera's extremely shallow focus blurring out everything else except our man. He's a member of the Sonderkommando, a group of Jewish men forced by the Nazis to help them carry out the ghastly work of killing Jews, cleaning off their jewelry, burning their corpses in funeral pyres, and shoveling the ashes into the river (on a side note, read Martin Amis's latest novel "Zone of Interest" for more detail). The Sonderkommando will be executed, too, though their assistance to the Nazis extend their lives for few months. In the film, Saul, in the foreground, works in the dimly-lit abattoir of the extermination room, while the piles of naked corpses and blood and nameless limbs are glimpsed in the background. Among the dead, he discovers the body of a boy whom he believes to be his son, and Saul sets out on a mission to find a rabbi who will perform a proper burial. The setup is meant for extreme irony (it also feels schematic): with a few thousands corpses disposed like trash around him, Saul wants a religious funeral for one.
The whole setup is disturbing, since "Son of Saul" works like a thriller - a man on an impossible mission - and it's just weird and awkward to have a Holocaust thriller. "Son of Saul" is tight, precise and technically composed to achieve the overwhelming effect of horror - the near-stampede at the mass graves, the howling victims horded into the chambers - are assaultive and almost impossible to bear. I mean, it's impressive filmmaking, but if "Son of Saul" wanted us to find a faint glimpse of humanity in what looks and feels like hell, we didn't. Or I didn't. Still, I couldn't look away from the screen, and I won't be surprised if the film wins best director on May 24.
A Holocaust film has never been a big sell in Thailand. But after the recent fiasco, "Son of Saul" should be a required viewing for us all.
