| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Géza Röhrig | ... | ||
| Levente Molnár | ... | ||
| Urs Rechn | ... |
Oberkapo Biederman
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Todd Charmont | ... |
Bearded Prisoner
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Jerzy Walczak | ... |
Rabbi Frankel
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Gergö Farkas | ... |
Saul's Son
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Balázs Farkas | ... |
Saul's Son
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| Sándor Zsótér | ... | ||
| Marcin Czarnik | ... |
Feigenbaum
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Levente Orbán | ... |
Russian Prisoner
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Kamil Dobrowolski | ... |
Mietek
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| Uwe Lauer | ... |
Oberscharführer Voss
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| Christian Harting | ... |
Oberscharführer Busch
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Attila Fritz | ... |
Yankl (Young Prisoner)
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| Mihály Kormos | ... |
Schlojme
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Two days in the life of Saul Auslander, Hungarian prisoner working as a member of the Sonderkommando at one of the Auschwitz Crematoriums who, to bury the corpse of a boy he takes for his son, tries to carry out his impossible deed: salvage the body and find a rabbi to bury it. While the Sonderkommando is to be liquidated at any moment, Saul turns away of the living and their plans of rebellion to save the remains of a son he never took care of when he was still alive. Written by LaoKoon
An excellent production depicting the grim reality of Hitler's concentration camps, focusing on the story of Saul, an inmate seeking some return to normal human existence in the context of his horrible life and soon impending death.
I couldn't help thinking that Saul was nuts (which is true) in his totally futile, and compulsively driven, quest for a return to normalcy in his life. Particularly when this nutty behavior on Saul's part compromised the efforts of the other inmates to deal with their terrible situation in a rational matter that offered some real hope instead of Saul's delusionally and emotionally based actions that were totally empty acts.
The conflict here is between rational attempts toward success as demonstrated by the other inmates as a group, and Saul's impeding their efforts with his individual selfish and psychotic actions that only provide for his temporary emotional (but no real lasting) fulfillment.
Not sure why the critics, or anyone else, loved this one.