The Angel of Auschwitz

The worst acting i think ive ever seen..Was it filmed in a garden shed..Managed about 20 minutes before putting it in the recycle bin,,,,

I only managed to watch about fifteen minutes of this film. I turned it off, watched something else, then thought I'd give it another go, thinking maybe I just hadn't been in the right frame of mind for it the first time. Nope - still unwatchable and I could only stomach another five minutes, in which the film had gotten nowhere. It jumped about in different time lines, the actors sleepwalked through modern-style moral preaching sermons disguised as dialogue which probably wouldn't have happened during that time as prisoners would have been too scared to say anything negative to their captors.

As a previous reviewer mentioned, the music is annoying and kind of adds to the droning mind numbing-ness of the film. The female actors were so nondescript I couldn't tell them apart. The 'actor' who played Mengeles was DREADFUL. It was like watching a really bad amateur theater production you have to stick out because your kid is in it. Maybe it got better after twenty minutes - I don't know, but I HAVE managed to stick out a boring film until it got better before, but this one was just unwatchable - and I did try. What a shame because it is such an important topic, particularly in this day and age.

With such an emotional subject, there is a lack of feeling to this production. Cinematography lacks awareness, everywhere looks too clean and new. The character, Josef, is almost a comic with a laughable fake German accent. The music score is awful and reminded me of those cheap CDs usually entitled 'relaxation' Or Yoga Music. Lighting is dark, but this might have been an (unsuccessful) attempt to create atmosphere.

I am genuinely amazed at how unengaging and superficial this film felt. It surprises me that a film with this subject can be so uninvolving and unaffecting. Just about everything is well below standard - music, acting, dialogue, editing..... etc. There is not one area where it feels like there has been real skill applied.

It is very difficult to try and imagine what the director thought he was showing. We jump around in time and characters have not even been aged. We follow (a very unconvincing) Mengele more than the title character. Most scenes seem to have been filmed against a shed wall. All the sets feel small and there are no wider shots or context. The sets, the costumes and the actors just do not convince in any way.

I won't even bother addressing historical inaccuracies and the ridiculousness of some scenes because the film never gets the viewer to a point where those things matter - it never grabs you or gives any convincing sense of even one character to latch on to or care about.

There is no atmosphere. No sense of any realism. Women deliver nice clean babies without breaking a sweat. A short, lazy scene showing the pre-Auschwitz life of characters does not automatically give them life or create empathy. A few wipes with a muddy cloth on your actors' legs will not suffice to convey that they are people suffering in Auschwitz.

I have learnt one thing. I know now it is possible to make a film about Auschwitz and leave the viewer almost completely emotionally untouched. I wouldn't have believed it before this.

It is based on a true story from the protagonist and Dr Mengele. Badly filmed with the sound and picture by amatuers but the story in hindsight is ok but in real time, the chopping and changing makes a bad cut.

If you bear with it, it shows compassion and love still existed in the most heinous of circumstances.