Twenty minutes was too much.

I sat down to watch the highly praised Son of Saul (2015, Hungary), not really wanting to, but still considering the film one to see.

Its subject isn’t easy viewing. It is difficult to watch.

Son of Saul is set in the Auschwitz concentration camps of World War II. They were run by the Third Reich. Millions of Jews were exterminated there.

Twenty minutes of seeing this was enough.

It was not explicit. But it was real. Very rarely can a film reach into us and make us sense the horrors of those camps. Son of Saul did that.

Bodies are lying around, naked. The screams in the gas chambers make you want to look away though you are not even seeing it. The walls the color of bile, the corridors cold and detached. This is too much. Too evil, too depraved. But it happened.

The central character

The film does not give us the usual frame of reference shots. There are no establishing shots, wide shots, or pans. The camera just follows Saul (Geza Rohrig), a Jewish Hungarian, going about his business in the camp, working for the Nazi’s, but destined to die himself. This point of view gives you a sense of intimacy and immediacy.

He takes interest in a dead boy and wants to give him a proper burial. That sense of humanity is distorted in this place and it is the kind of radical good deed that does not make sense here. But there is still some good in this world.

The effect of this film is making you desire good–and puts into perspective other everyday life issues which pales in comparison to Auschwitz.

The abject decay of life reminded me of hearing about contemporary wars in the news, so the film has a present reality.

Son of Saul is too much. Twenty minutes of this is too much.

This is more than a film. It’s about the realities of evil, war and dehumanization, but it does not condone it. Instinctively, as a viewer, I want more of good than the evils presented. That is the power of a film like this.