I am genuinely amazed at how unengaging and superficial this film felt. It surprises me that a film with this subject can be so uninvolving and unaffecting. Just about everything is well below standard - music, acting, dialogue, editing..... etc. There is not one area where it feels like there has been real skill applied.
It is very difficult to try and imagine what the director thought he was showing. We jump around in time and characters have not even been aged. We follow (a very unconvincing) Mengele more than the title character. Most scenes seem to have been filmed against a shed wall. All the sets feel small and there are no wider shots or context. The sets, the costumes and the actors just do not convince in any way.
I won't even bother addressing historical inaccuracies and the ridiculousness of some scenes because the film never gets the viewer to a point where those things matter - it never grabs you or gives any convincing sense of even one character to latch on to or care about.
There is no atmosphere. No sense of any realism. Women deliver nice clean babies without breaking a sweat. A short, lazy scene showing the pre-Auschwitz life of characters does not automatically give them life or create empathy. A few wipes with a muddy cloth on your actors' legs will not suffice to convey that they are people suffering in Auschwitz.
I have learnt one thing. I know now it is possible to make a film about Auschwitz and leave the viewer almost completely emotionally untouched. I wouldn't have believed it before this.
