I can't imagine going to any movie without knowing in advance what it was about. Movie tickets are too expensive, and there are too many types of movies I don't care for, for me to go at random. A fair number of the really negative previous reviews, however, seem to have been the result of people going and expecting something very different, or going without knowing what this movie does. I can understand that those people might have been disappointed, but the movie was not meant for them, and they did choose to go in ignorance.
As various previous reviewers have explained, this movie is a view of what life near a death camp might have been like for Germans who were indifferent to what was happening to the Jews (and other persecuted minorities) during the War. They simply went about their lives, trying as best they could to make something good of them despite growing shortages, occasional Allied bombings, etc. (This movie evidently takes place in 1942 or 43, so before the Allied bombings and the shortages really became severe.) The wife of the camp commander is so indifferent to what is starting to go on in the camp she can see just the other side of her garden wall that when her husband is transferred, she chooses to remain in their nice house, with its garden, rather than take advantage of that chance to leave. Her choice is not evil - it hurts no one, unlike the daily actions of her husband the camp commandant - but it is certainly a stellar example of indifference to human suffering.
There is never any discussion of the moral issues at hand. Near the end, Höss appears to vomit after leaving a meeting where the Final Solution is discussed, but we don't know why.
I didn't care for the end - which I will not recount so as not to spoil it - and would rather the movie had ended before the switch to modern times. Previous reviewers have discussed what that switch might have been intended to suggest, but to me it broke the effect of what had come before to no valid purpose.
As I thought about the movie during dinner after seeing it, I too, like some of the previous reviewers here, came to the conclusion that it had made its point fairly early on. After awhile I didn't see that it was adding anything as we continued to follow the family though their pleasant but uninteresting lives in the shadow of the death camp.
I also found the younger children's indifference to what was going on literally next door to be hard to accept. Not that everything else in this movie is realistic.
So, for me, an interesting idea that wore out its welcome before the movie had ended.
As various previous reviewers have explained, this movie is a view of what life near a death camp might have been like for Germans who were indifferent to what was happening to the Jews (and other persecuted minorities) during the War. They simply went about their lives, trying as best they could to make something good of them despite growing shortages, occasional Allied bombings, etc. (This movie evidently takes place in 1942 or 43, so before the Allied bombings and the shortages really became severe.) The wife of the camp commander is so indifferent to what is starting to go on in the camp she can see just the other side of her garden wall that when her husband is transferred, she chooses to remain in their nice house, with its garden, rather than take advantage of that chance to leave. Her choice is not evil - it hurts no one, unlike the daily actions of her husband the camp commandant - but it is certainly a stellar example of indifference to human suffering.
There is never any discussion of the moral issues at hand. Near the end, Höss appears to vomit after leaving a meeting where the Final Solution is discussed, but we don't know why.
I didn't care for the end - which I will not recount so as not to spoil it - and would rather the movie had ended before the switch to modern times. Previous reviewers have discussed what that switch might have been intended to suggest, but to me it broke the effect of what had come before to no valid purpose.
As I thought about the movie during dinner after seeing it, I too, like some of the previous reviewers here, came to the conclusion that it had made its point fairly early on. After awhile I didn't see that it was adding anything as we continued to follow the family though their pleasant but uninteresting lives in the shadow of the death camp.
I also found the younger children's indifference to what was going on literally next door to be hard to accept. Not that everything else in this movie is realistic.
So, for me, an interesting idea that wore out its welcome before the movie had ended.