The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Director Mark Herman (Brassed Off, Little Voice) adapts a moving and tragic novel about two boys separated by race, hatred and superstition during the height of the Third Reich. Having seen this movie it’s no surprise why the reviews are so mixed, and why both positive and negative reviews have been delivered with such conviction. There seems to be little middle ground as to whether or not it is fitting for filmmakers to tell this type of story in the way that it was told, partially set in a concentration camp in Germany during the second World War.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas brings to mind Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, a concentration camp film that dealt with the tragedy of the Holocaust with hope and at times a comic touch. Both films use similar elements to tell their stories, but Pyjamas takes a heavier hand and Herman never flinches away from the story he is telling, and in the end he delivers a film that is sure to elicit discussion from its viewers.
It was only after discussing this film at length with Mike that I was able to work out that I like this film, and would recommend it. But it took some doing. (As well as a screening of Jonathan Demme’s new film, Rachel Getting Married, which was so painful to sit through that most anything seems appealing by comparison.)
Eight-year-old Bruno is the son of a German Commandant who is taken from his idyllic life in Berlin into the country when his father is transferred to a work assignment there. Now friendless and no longer in school, Bruno is left to fend for himself on a swing in a small fenced in courtyard of his family’s compound. But Bruno years for adventure, and manages to escape the compound to explore a farm he has seen from an upstairs window. The farm is of course the concentration camp run by his father, and crouching behind a rubbish pile on the other side of the electrified fence Bruno encounters Shmuel, and eight-year-old Jewish boy who becomes Bruno’s only friend.
Pyjamas deals with the loss of innocence and the lies we perpetrate on our children, and the consequences of both sanctioning such indoctrination and failing to fully oppose it. But underlying all of it is the simple act of friendship, of two boys who accept one another for what they are and are not daunted by the propaganda of war and hatred that swirls around them.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas brings to mind Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, a concentration camp film that dealt with the tragedy of the Holocaust with hope and at times a comic touch. Both films use similar elements to tell their stories, but Pyjamas takes a heavier hand and Herman never flinches away from the story he is telling, and in the end he delivers a film that is sure to elicit discussion from its viewers.
It was only after discussing this film at length with Mike that I was able to work out that I like this film, and would recommend it. But it took some doing. (As well as a screening of Jonathan Demme’s new film, Rachel Getting Married, which was so painful to sit through that most anything seems appealing by comparison.)
Eight-year-old Bruno is the son of a German Commandant who is taken from his idyllic life in Berlin into the country when his father is transferred to a work assignment there. Now friendless and no longer in school, Bruno is left to fend for himself on a swing in a small fenced in courtyard of his family’s compound. But Bruno years for adventure, and manages to escape the compound to explore a farm he has seen from an upstairs window. The farm is of course the concentration camp run by his father, and crouching behind a rubbish pile on the other side of the electrified fence Bruno encounters Shmuel, and eight-year-old Jewish boy who becomes Bruno’s only friend.
Pyjamas deals with the loss of innocence and the lies we perpetrate on our children, and the consequences of both sanctioning such indoctrination and failing to fully oppose it. But underlying all of it is the simple act of friendship, of two boys who accept one another for what they are and are not daunted by the propaganda of war and hatred that swirls around them.
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