Shame! Shame!

Rating: 4/10 (1 November 2009)

This is a great story, but dumbed down and splattered with dialogue and images that were a nonsense. The young actor playing the Nazi commandant's son Bruno indeed showed tremendous talent, but why was he asked to speak like an adult, rather than an eight-year-old? It was so unnecessary; so counter-productive. And how come that Shmuel, the Jewish kid in the concentration camp, was fatter than Bruno? How come the servant from the concentration camp looked better fed than the Nazi family? How come there was just a single, poorly constructed, non-electrified fence where Bruno and Shmuel met? How come there were never any guards patrolling the perimeter fence? How come in wartime did the commandant's wife have access to a seemingly endless supply of designer clothes? (And to nit-pick, where did Bruno get a modern-day, zip-up shirt?) And so the questions could go on. Not least how and why we are expected to believe how easy it would have been to penetrate the fence as the film moves towards its conclusion.
To be fair, the acting was mostly excellent, though I'd loved to have seen it made in German rather than English. And I am immensely relieved – and a little surprised – that there was no cop-out with the ending. But as for the rest Oh dear.
Movies often require the suspension of disbelief – never more so than in, say, the James Bond flicks – but to undermine such a serious, important, compelling story with a contemptuous approach to so many realities was seriously disappointing. Shame on you, BBC Films. Shame on you, Miramax. Shame on you, writer-director Mark Herman.