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November 14, 2008
Children's innocence
New Holocaust film offers hope – if only a little.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Despite its brutal and tragic ending, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is ultimately an optimistic film. Its main message is that humankind is not inherently evil – hatred must be taught and, even then, sometimes the lessons don't take.
Based on the novel by John Boyne, the protagonist in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is Bruno, the eight-year-old son of a newly promoted Nazi commandant. The job means that Bruno (Asa Butterfield), his sister Gretel (Amber Beattie) and their mother (Vera Farmiga) and father (David Thewlis) must move from their Berlin home, where life is busy and metropolitan – even for a child – to the country. The contrast is drastic between the warm, active house in the city and the family's grey, sparse mansion near a "farm," which is what Bruno calls the death camp he can see from his bedroom window.
The young boy is completely oblivious to the war going on around him and his father's direct complicity in the murder of millions of Jews. Driven by boredom and an eight-year-old's sense of adventure, Bruno breaks his mother's rule about leaving the yard and happens upon an electrified barbed-wire fence, on the other side of which is Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), also eight years old, but imprisoned, starving, shaved bald, tattooed with a number and wearing striped "pajamas."
Awkwardly, a friendship develops between the two boys and, slowly, Bruno begins to question what he's being taught about Jews. His experiences with Shmuel don't support the lies he's been told, nor does the kindness he receives from another prisoner, who serves Bruno's family in their home.
Directed by Mark Herman, who also wrote the screenplay, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a very well acted and beautifully filmed movie. Butterfield really captures the naiveté of a child and he manages to communicate Bruno's every doubt and confusing moment through his facial expressions. Farmiga, as Bruno's mother, also puts in a strong performance – she, too, is ignorant at first of the atrocities being committed by her husband and fellow Germans, at least the extent of them, until an unwitting soldier accidentally reveals the truth to her. The development of her character and how she reacts to the reality of the situation are portrayed with a sensitivity that demands empathy from the audience.
There is more humor in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas than one might expect. Most of it arises from Bruno, who's just trying to be a regular kid in what are anything but regular times. This occasional lightness – a reminder of what humanity should be all about – is a welcome break from the overall tragic weight of the film, as are the scenes between Bruno and Shmuel, which have a fairy tale feel to them: the boys play checkers and even briefly attempt a game of catch in a place where no such fun could ever have really existed.
Through the progression of discovery on the parts of Bruno and his mother, and with the growth of the friendship between Bruno and Shmuel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas leads to its grandiosely horrifying and heartrending end. While the film is rated PG-13, its last moments are incredibly disturbing and not easy to forget – which, of course, is the film's other message: millions were murdered in the Holocaust and they must never be forgotten. The appropriately small hope with which we are left is the innocence of children: if one day we can stop teaching hatred and violence, perhaps humanity has a chance at survival.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas opens in Vancouver on Nov. 14.
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