Star Rating: 
This snuck up on me. Three weeks ago, I’d never heard of this. Two weeks ago, I was really interested by the trailer I saw before another film. Now, having taken a chance on this new release, I am so pleased it did. I think I’ve just seen the best movie so far of 2008.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a wonderful fable about the morality of the holocaust and morality in general. This is always a difficult subject to tackle, to varying degrees of results, the best being that absolutely heartbreaking yet genuinely beautiful Polanski film The Pianist, to the unfocused sentimental, frankly manipulated slock of Schindler’s List (a rant I will have later perhaps). The difference in this film is that rather than tackling the experiences and brutalities of the atrocities of the time, this film deals with it from the distanced. It is a softer, youthful film that skirts over the grand themes of the holocaust. It is child-like in the greatest sense; full of the sense of the unknowing, the simplistic, the misunderstood and the innocence. It is an absolutely wonderful experience.
It tells the story of Bruno (Asa Butterfield), a eight year old boy whose soldier father relocates the family from Berlin to become the commander of a local concentration camp. The parents try to shield Bruno from the truth of his surroundings but eventually Bruno discovers the camp, which he thinks is a farm, and befriends a boy, Schmul (Jack Scanlon), through the fence who seems to wear pyjamas all day. Slowly, Bruno attempts to understand the world he lives in, the principles he is being taught to believe and the reality of what he sees. Crucially to the narrative and the themes, he never succeeds.
The film has been criticised by the British national press for being too contrived and too emotionally manipulative. Using children to tell a story about the consequences of the holocaust has been seen as in some way too exploitative, too easy in a way, and the idea of such events happening (where are the guards when all these conversations are happening?) laughable. Frankly, such criticism misses the point of the film entirely. It isn’t a realistic portrayal of the events of the time, nor is it attempting to be in anyway emotionally complex. It is deliberately simplistic because the lens of the director Mark Herman sees the world through the eyes of a child. Thus, the story is fable-like, it deals with broad and expressive brush strokes, colouring the events with a feel of wax crayons and potato paints.
The point of this is to achieve two things, both of which the film succeeds in a grandiose manner. It positions the viewer as an innocent, meaning that the film works as a teaching tool for younger audiences (it is only a 12A, a rather impressive achievement given the subject matter). This means that the film acts as a way of understanding a frankly incomprehensible act. It teaches very little, just the basics, but its teaching is done with a great emotional backbone, sometimes art based on real subject manner must always have. For the more knowledgeable audience, the tone is deeply ironic and rather doom-laden. The conversations of the two boys as the attempt to understand what is happening, watching them guess incorrectly and make assumptions and mistakes based on their uncorrupted soul is both charming and poignantly far from the reality. It uses the lack of knowledge to point out great hypocrisies to the evil acts that are far deeper than facts. How can a man be a father and a killer? How can a mother protect whilst watching others die around her? How can a person be a boy and a Jew? The Nazis deal in simplicities that do not exist, and Bruno understands that profoundly, just as we all do now. It isn’t making a great new conclusion of the terrible events of that time, its pointing out the incomprehensible nature of it. That is its tour-de-force. This is real fine film, with great performances, perfect plotting and a fresh, new voice on a historical subject. It is masterfully contrasted, its direction expressive and its score by the ever-solid James Horner absolutely beautiful as it flows through the events. Incidentally, take some tissues as the film doesn’t pull its punches. I haven’t been this upset at the end of a film for quite some time. Bravo.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a wonderful fable about the morality of the holocaust and morality in general. This is always a difficult subject to tackle, to varying degrees of results, the best being that absolutely heartbreaking yet genuinely beautiful Polanski film The Pianist, to the unfocused sentimental, frankly manipulated slock of Schindler’s List (a rant I will have later perhaps). The difference in this film is that rather than tackling the experiences and brutalities of the atrocities of the time, this film deals with it from the distanced. It is a softer, youthful film that skirts over the grand themes of the holocaust. It is child-like in the greatest sense; full of the sense of the unknowing, the simplistic, the misunderstood and the innocence. It is an absolutely wonderful experience.
It tells the story of Bruno (Asa Butterfield), a eight year old boy whose soldier father relocates the family from Berlin to become the commander of a local concentration camp. The parents try to shield Bruno from the truth of his surroundings but eventually Bruno discovers the camp, which he thinks is a farm, and befriends a boy, Schmul (Jack Scanlon), through the fence who seems to wear pyjamas all day. Slowly, Bruno attempts to understand the world he lives in, the principles he is being taught to believe and the reality of what he sees. Crucially to the narrative and the themes, he never succeeds.
The film has been criticised by the British national press for being too contrived and too emotionally manipulative. Using children to tell a story about the consequences of the holocaust has been seen as in some way too exploitative, too easy in a way, and the idea of such events happening (where are the guards when all these conversations are happening?) laughable. Frankly, such criticism misses the point of the film entirely. It isn’t a realistic portrayal of the events of the time, nor is it attempting to be in anyway emotionally complex. It is deliberately simplistic because the lens of the director Mark Herman sees the world through the eyes of a child. Thus, the story is fable-like, it deals with broad and expressive brush strokes, colouring the events with a feel of wax crayons and potato paints.
The point of this is to achieve two things, both of which the film succeeds in a grandiose manner. It positions the viewer as an innocent, meaning that the film works as a teaching tool for younger audiences (it is only a 12A, a rather impressive achievement given the subject matter). This means that the film acts as a way of understanding a frankly incomprehensible act. It teaches very little, just the basics, but its teaching is done with a great emotional backbone, sometimes art based on real subject manner must always have. For the more knowledgeable audience, the tone is deeply ironic and rather doom-laden. The conversations of the two boys as the attempt to understand what is happening, watching them guess incorrectly and make assumptions and mistakes based on their uncorrupted soul is both charming and poignantly far from the reality. It uses the lack of knowledge to point out great hypocrisies to the evil acts that are far deeper than facts. How can a man be a father and a killer? How can a mother protect whilst watching others die around her? How can a person be a boy and a Jew? The Nazis deal in simplicities that do not exist, and Bruno understands that profoundly, just as we all do now. It isn’t making a great new conclusion of the terrible events of that time, its pointing out the incomprehensible nature of it. That is its tour-de-force. This is real fine film, with great performances, perfect plotting and a fresh, new voice on a historical subject. It is masterfully contrasted, its direction expressive and its score by the ever-solid James Horner absolutely beautiful as it flows through the events. Incidentally, take some tissues as the film doesn’t pull its punches. I haven’t been this upset at the end of a film for quite some time. Bravo.
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