But you, dear László Nemes, chose neither radical darkness nor radical silence. Your film is terribly impure, loud and colourful. Everything there is in motion, in urgency, in transition from the indistinct to the distinct and back.
The hell that you show us is a colourful hell: there is the colour of those who have just died, the colour—as though long dead—of Saul’s face, the blood-red colour of the large cross painted on the backs of the Sonderkommando members, the grey colour of the smoke and of human ashes,
in stark contrast to the green of the birch forest in this autumn of 1944. Not to mention the black colour of the coal for the ovens and, of course, of the doors that close.
So you have not forgotten black. But you have brought it out of its abstraction. As though to shine light—not “all light”, no, for light is never “whole”, except in the heaven of intangible truths—shine a light on the “black hole” that obsessed you: shine a light while looking at this “black hole”, while making it visually unfold.
Saul fia (2015)
索爾之子
Dir.: Nemes László
噗浪觀影同好會
綿長的過肩鏡頭讓觀眾參與主角 Saul 的日常，肩膀以外的大部分畫面散焦，只有抹布鏟子等工具或赤裸的腳腕清晰，Saul 都來不及生出罪惡感，就要把淋浴室刷洗乾淨以便再次使用。
Saul 執著的男孩可能不是他的孩子，而是他尋找重心的嘗試。從工作隊其他成員的對話可以知道，這批隊員的時限快到了，納粹會找下一批工作隊頂替，而他們正計畫用暗藏的財物疏通層層關卡，用炸藥粉轟爛這個鬼地方。
除了暴動，工作隊的另一個打算是拍照讓外界知道集中營的慘況，但拍攝當時焚化爐的煙讓畫面一片霧白，我猜照片大概也看不出什麼吧。
“Your film, Son of Saul, is a monster. A necessary, coherent, beneficial, innocent monster.”