I would recommend it as an amazing piece of filmmaking, it’s highly effective at what it does. It’s not a movie you can “enjoy” in any way other than by respecting the quality of the craft and the imagination used to bring it to life. Aside from that, it is horrifying, but not in the way that you would expect from a movie about Auschwitz.
No violence is directly shown on screen, in fact, you never see anything inside the camp at all other than what you can see from outside the walls — the tops of buildings, and smokestacks.
Instead the movie is a pretty boring slice-of-life drama about the commandant and his family. But that’s what makes it disturbing — it’s the fact that the people you are watching are so indifferent to the horror they’ve created, and are part of, as they live their dream life in a beautiful house next door to a camp where people are being slaughtered on an industrial scale.
The movie is shot almost entirely with static cameras using mid and long range shots, which gives it a dispassionate feeling, like you’re a fly on the wall and almost complicit in what you are watching. Then the movie’s audio really puts you there, because as you’re watching the boring family drama play out, you can constantly hear the noise of the camp off in the background — machinery, vehicles, screams, gunshots, etc.
So it’s a tough watch, not because you’re constantly seeing suffering and violence, but because you know the suffering and violence is happening just on the other side of the wall, and you’re spending time hanging out with the people who are causing it, the most disgusting scumbags who ever lived, as they enjoy their bucolic family life.
This is not a movie like Schindler’s List, it doesn’t really have a plot, it’s more like an experience. So I recommend it as a highly effective piece of art that will really make you think.
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