I just read a review of this movie that completely, and utterly, ripped it apart. The reviewer was appalled by the fact that a movie could be made about the Holocaust that was for all practical purposes a children’s movie. But then again, I also remember how some people did not know what to make of Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful… a Holocaust comedy? Can you really make a Holocaust comedy? Or a Holocaust kids’ movie? Is that appropriate? Well, why not? Daring films like this show that there are still new ways of presenting the all-too-familiar horror-story of the concentration camps, without insulting the truth of what happened.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (based on the novel by John Boyne) is told through the eyes of young Bruno (Asa Butterfield), the 8-year-old son of a military officer. He lives a good life in a big house in the city, and has neighborhood friends that he plays with while his parents host big important parties. The ongoing war seems distant in his protected world. But this distant war is World War II, and the city is Berlin. But more alarmingly, his father (David Thewlis) is a Nazi officer, and a very high-ranking one at that. Dad gets an important promotion, and the next thing Bruno knows, they are moving out to the country, and Bruno is faced with making a big, cold, concrete-modern house his new home.
Curiosity and boredom get the better of Bruno in his new home. Though his mom (Vera Farmiga) tells him to only play in the yard while dad is off at “work,” Bruno sneaks out to go exploring. There’s that strange farm off in the distance that he can see from his bedroom window… maybe there are children there that he can play with? Bruno walks up to the electrified fence of the farm, and meets a boy his age on the other side. This boy, in his strange striped pajamas, has an even stranger name: Shmuel. “Schmoooo is a funny name!” says Bruno, but Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) thinks the same of Bruno’s name. They giggle. A friendship is born.
Going into this film from the start (considering the subject matter), you just know it won’t end well. But to its credit, the film keeps its childlike perspective, with only the most basic aspects of the true horror being revealed: Bruno’s mother slowly figures out what is actually going on at the “work-farm” that her husband manages, and why the smoke coming from those “farm” chimneys is so very rancid and awful-smelling. Farmiga does a lovely job as Bruno’s mother, trying to keep it together (while completely losing it) when she realizes the environment that her children are being raised in. David Thewlis, as Bruno’s dad, also effectively plays both an often-absent adored father, and a scary, powerful Nazi Commandant.
But if it weren’t for the lovely acting job by Asa Butterfield as Bruno, this film may not have worked as well as it does. His huge blue eyes take in the adult world around him, but don’t always comprehend. What he knows is that he is lonely, and the boy he has met on the other side of the fence is his only friend. He doesn’t understand why his friend is on one side, and he is on the other, especially because the other boy seems nice and good. Portraying the Holocaust through a child’s eyes is a tricky stunt, but I thought it was very well-done in this film. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a lovely story of friendship, that ultimately—and inevitably—breaks your heart.
