Starring Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn, Todd Charmont; directed by László Nemes; 107 minutes; R for disturbing violent content and some graphic nudity

“Son of Saul” doesn’t just get under your skin – it goes straight to the bloodstream. There, it churns and festers as you try to make sense out of the senseless horror of the Holocaust and the plight of the Sonderkommando – Jewish prisoners forced to assist the Nazis with the genocide.

Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes has created what feels like a new cinematic language to tell this hyper-focused story of a Sonderkommando, Saul (Géza Röhrig) across two days at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in October 1944. We rarely leave Saul’s point of view. In this way, the film feels like one long tracking shot. The camera watches him from the front and follows him from behind – we grow accustomed to recognizing him from the blood red X messily painted on his back.

Early on, Saul spots a boy dying on a slab surrounded by Nazi doctors. After he breathes his final breath, they order an autopsy. This dead boy – who he believes to be his son – becomes Saul’s obsession as he commits himself to finding a rabbi to say the Kaddish and arrange a proper burial. Saul is a shell of a man, and the self-assigned objective gives him purpose outside of the barbaric tasks he’s forced to commit. But whether his quest to give this boy some final respect is one of sincerity, a selfish, desperate attempt to regain some humanity or a manifestation of his madness is a question only the viewer can answer.

Lindsay Bahr, the Associated Press

Géza Röhrig stars in “Son of Saul.” Courtesy Laokoon Filmgroup.