This film may give you a very wrong impression about history and the human cruelty of a concentration or extermination camp

Rating: 5/10 (5 April 2010)

This film is a tragical comedy, a sensitive film with a few brilliant actors, an interesting atmosphere and a story which can touch everyone who sees this movie, even if there are still some more intense movies about the concentration camps and the World Wars.
Why did I just give a 5 star vote and not about 8 points? I would like to explain you. I'm a person who is very interested in history, who is studying in history, I'm German and I have already visited a concentration camp and I know people who were implicated in this whole story during the Nazi regime. The life in the concentration camps was like hell or even heavier than this and anyone can imagine how life has been in there. If you walk through the walls of such a camps and take a look at the photos of the piles of skinny bodies and you turn around and realise that you stay on the same ground were the most horrible genocide ever had taken place, you just want to cry or scream or whatever. And I think that this movie doesn't show the reality, gives strangers a very wrong impression of what could have been these concentration camps. It's showing the camps as if there were just a few Jewish guys living in a very small room and doing some forced work under the guidance of some military guys. The film doesn't show that those people were extremely abused, had so much hunger and pain and such a lack of place and medical help that they were all rather dead than alive, that they were treated as you would not even treat the ugliest animal. A child would have never survived this hell and would have never had the chance to believe the positive lies of his father. The movie is a nice story, but historically wrong, not realistic, not sensitive and heavy enough to let its viewers take a look at a situation within a concentration camp. Some people may think after watching that movie that, after all, the situation wasn't that bad in such a camp and that there was still optimism, positive feelings and that a little boy would have survived in such a place. Sadly, this isn't true. And I think it is very critical to show the past circumstences to concerned people who have lived this hell or also to those who doesn't know much about it in such a way that the movie does even if this is for some artistic reasons.
That's why I wasn't very happy about this whole movie, its success and its excellent reputation, but rather upset about such an interpretation of history. And though the acting is great and touching, I can't give more than a five stars rating. Believe me, visiting such a camp may touch you way more than this movie... If you'd like to see a movie about the whole situation in a more realistic way, go for "The pianist", that's "hard" stuff...