"In Darkness" is based on a real story. A sewer worker from Lwow, a Polish catholic, hides in the town's underground a group of jews during WW2, saving them from camp imprisonment. For a price. Initially. With minimum involvement in their sewer inhabitants life. Initially. The movie evolves gradually to an outcome that we can consider, let's say happy, when after more than a year in underground the survivors get to see the sunlight again.
"Son of Saul" is a fiction where a guy named Saul, inmate in Auschwitz charged with collecting bodies from gas chambers, decides some day that the corpse of a child deserves a proper burial instead the standard incineration. And also decides that the ritual for that is has priority over anything else. So he starts looking for a Rabi. The outcome is not happy (and I don't want to hear about artificially interpreted metaphors contradicting this conclusion).
The general story context in both movies is a delicate subject and it's not something to discuss on which is better than which. Considering the movie making on the other hand can be compared. "In Darkness" did not impress me with anything. "Son of Saul" did ... on the negative side. I've seen one of the worst camera work in a production on which you're supposed to have high expectations. I've heard praise on the editing. It's preposterous. The movie is really hard on the viewer's eyes. The camera is almost permanently close to the main character tracking him everywhere. In some shots you want to see more, but no ... no chance ... The framing is 4:3, so really no chance. With all the risk I can compare this with a 3rd person game in which you don't have a zoom-out option. Sometimes you get a change in the camera position, which makes things even worse. If it was from start to finish tracking the main characters at least we would've had something original, a continuous shot like in Lubezki's Birdman (well ... letting aside the horrible framing). I don't want to hear stuff like it brings us close to the character's feelings, etc ... Eye-tiring is eye-tiring. What's good in "Son of Saul" is the acting. Technically it's bad.
Bout movies are rough. Both movies bring the main character to a point where he sacrifices more than what can save just because he wants to save. The difference is the concrete, real situation in "In Darkness" where the will to save targets somebody alive, besides the concrete, imaginary situation in "Son of Saul" where who's to save is dead. And again, this time I'm not interested in what's beyond concrete .. you give me a real life documentary with all its misery, then leave the concrete there .. cheap metaphors meant to deepen the atrocity seen there are not appreciated. I prefer the one in "In Darkness" with finally getting out to the "light" from the sewer. Both movies shock. "Son of Saul" makes it more often. Sufficiently to become a new "Hotel Rwanda" for last year's Cannes jury, after the Romanian "4,3,2", and more recently, having not much competition in winning the Oscar. I can recently observe that a Cannes movie = fancy = must shock, otherwise the jury couldn't explain in its infinite wisdom the deepest meaning of the film. "Shock" simplifies all this, because it doesn't require explanation.
Rating:
"In Darkness" - 3 out of 5
"Son of Saul" - 2 out of 5
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