Auschwitz

There is a lot of bad press surrounding Ewe Boll, but just to buck the trend I find most of his work, a rewarding experience. Okay he did not have the budget to recreate Auschwitz 1 or 2 but the mechanics of the holocaust are exactly right. Other reviews rightly pointed out there should have been many more in the gas chambers but having less, gave them a grave individuality. The most disturbing aspect though, is interviews with German teenagers (of today), Their lack of knowledge and understanding (of what happened) is so stupid, it actually borders on the supernatural. Balanced out, right at the end, by one bright boy who knew more than all the rest put together. One downside, is I wish it had been a lot longer and with less interviews.

AUSCHWITZ is something atypical for a Uwe Boll movie. The German director notorious for making B-movies like BLOODRAYNE and IN THE NAME OF THE KING decided to try his hand at making a 'worthy' film a la SCHINDLER'S LIST. The end result is AUSCHWITZ, a look at what went on inside the infamous concentration camp.

Sadly, this film turns out to be just as poor - if not more so - than the rest of Boll's output. It's a short film with a documentary feel that aims to put across to the viewer what it feels like to be gassed in a chamber. It's suitably explicit and depressing, but Boll's direction is so poor and the acting so bad that it lacks the real power needed to convey the message properly. It doesn't help that with the running time coming up so short, Boll pads things out by having random German teenagers chatting about the Holocaust, which is indeed very random.

I am not that surprised that the director Uwe Boll gave us such a film; all long his career, he was brave, bold enough to propose plots that no other director wished to do. This movie is not good at all, badly directed, bt the story of course outsanding in the treatment, hiding nothing at all, revealing the most unbearable details of the executions. This is so far the one of the only "fictional" movie ever made about Auschwitz and extermination - not concentration though - camps, and from the inside, from the hangmen's point of view. Not from the victims point of view; because in this case, you had hundred of films speaking of extermination camps, of course. But maybe in the sixties and seventies, there were several Polish or Czech movies, shot in black and white, very rough, bitter, austere, evoking this scheme; I guess I have reviewed some of them. Yes, I am positive, there are some, better done than this film, but I don't remember the titles, sorry folks. I don't speak of ZONE OF INTEREST or DEATH IS MY TRADE. The two most known films analysing the Auschwitz commander daily life.

You get actually two movies here. The one is a movie about the Ausschwitz camp (which as many have stated does not look exactly like the original camp -> he didn't have the money to built it) and the other one is interviews with kids about the holocaust and the Hitler in general. The latter is pretty intriguing and would have made for an interesting view if it had stayed alone.

But I had to vote and review both parts and the other one just isn't good enough. Boll tries to be as real as possible (he has stated that this is not Schindlers List, but a real depiction of what went on back then, though Budget restrictions did not really allow him to be faithful to what he wanted to accomplish), but never achieves his goal fully. Due to the budget restrictions the tone is gritty, which helps the documentary style, but does not add acting value, which on the other hand brings the movie down again. Points for trying ... or maybe not ... up to you to decide ...

No, I am not a history teacher, just someone who is interested in the holocaust. And I was shocked when i saw this movie. Of course, it is shocking to watch who the people were gassed, but please, it wasn't like this. Everything was wrong. I've been to Auschwitz and the gas chambers looked different. They are referring to Auschwitz-Birkenau but got the size of the camp, chambers en area completely wrong. Besides, by the time they were gassing like this there were over a 100.000 prisoners in Auschwitz- Birkenau, they were not in this movie.

This documentary has been made for people to remember what the holocaust was like. I don't think this movie will do anything like that. It was to clean, new, simple en with the wrong facts. Like Uwe Bolle said: Auschwitz was hell on earth. I think he was right, but it was much worse than this movie.