His performance is searing and unshakeable.
In return, their own executions are delayed.
The expression on Sauls face is utterly deadpan.
Credit: Sony Pictures Classics
Who knows how many times hes heard these same lies?
Within moments we hear banging on the shower doors, muffled cries of anguish.
Through it all, Sauls face doesnt change.
The screen goes black.
But Nemes is telling his story in a revolutionary new wayand its devastating.
Theres no room for sentimentality or conventional Hollywood narative in his film.
It has the raw, sickening force of a documentary we watch through spread fingers.
Its a young boy.
The Nazi doctors put the child out of his misery.
For here on, his own survival becomes secondary something any parent would be able to understand.
Nemes shoots his films grim scenes with an unsparing matter-of-factness that mirrors the businesslike nature of the Nazi genocide.
The result is both harrowing and carries a weight thats almost too much to bear.
Rohrigs performance, with his numb, haunted thousand-yard stare, in a way almost defies description.
Its the rarest kind of moviegoing experience: an absolute masterpiece.A
