I didn't feel the pain

Rating: 6/10 (26 December 2016)

I had to rack my brains on this 6/10 rating - I honestly didn't know where to rank the film. It was good enough not to be bad, if you know what I mean? The camera-work cheapened the entire film for me. Perhaps it was because of lack of financial budget, but filming everything in POV and blurring the background meant that we didn't get treated to a proper feature film and had to mostly use our imaginations for what was going on in the background. Frankly, I found it quite tiresome. It reminded me a little bit of a Lars von Trier film in its sense of hopelessness. bit without the spiky twist.
I'm sorry my negative attitude towards this film - it wasn't awful at all, but the 'plot' wasn't interesting enough to hold an entire film. As an onlooker, I could sense right at the beginning that the boy wasn't Saul's real son, through his lack of reaction to the suffocation scene, so I had to work out for myself that Saul was obviously totally desensitised and quite deranged.
Again, I have to admit how sorry I am for wanting more entertainment from this film, and not getting it. I feel a huge compassion for all the people involved in the real-life horror of concentration camp Nazi Germany, especially as a father myself and the thought of losing my own family in this way, but this still doesn't make the film an entertaining viewing experience, even for the sick kicks I was looking for.
I need something more visual and spectacular I'm afraid, like Schindler's List or The Pianist.
And perhaps this film deserves a second or third viewing to fully appreciate its horrors, but do you really want to watch it again?