5) Son Of Saul
No film in 2015 comes close to matching Hungarian director László Nemes’ audacious, exhausting debut for sheer impact. A painstakingly intimate portrayal of one prisoner’s wretched existence during the final days of the Auschwitz death camp, Son of Saul’s formal rigour facilitates a sober consideration of dehumanization and genocide.
Though not dispassionate, Nemes’ clinical direction and the almost impenetrable lead performance of Géza Röhrig make Son of Saul both bracingly urgent and deliberately opaque. Who Saul is as a man is only revealed by the actions he takes to stay alive, and what his story reflects about the greater crimes of the Nazi regime is very little.
But it’s the immediacy and myopia of this one fixed perspective that allows Nemes to manifest the individual suffering that informs all cultural and historical tragedies. If Saul, and as a result, the viewer, doesn’t look at the horror all around, it’s not for lack of empathy; it’s because who could bear to?