Implausible holocaust tragic fable.

Rating: 4/10 (15 February 2009)

Not many people seem to be giving this "holocaust drama" low marks but I'll be amongst them. I found its implausible, no make that impossible plot line acted wholly against the credibility that such a serious subject deserves and found myself by the end of the film with that awkward feeling of having been manipulated which should never be part of a truly satisfying cinematic experience.
Yes, it's well shot and the attention to period detail is satisfactory, but that should surely be taken as granted in modern-day films, particularly after Spielberg put down the marker with "Schindler's List". Some of the actors look right, particularly the "only following orders" German P.O.W. Commandant husband and his ignorant, unwilling wife, but others don't. Maybe I'm just too familiar with David Hayman in his brilliant white shirts in TV's "Trial and Retribution" but here he appears miscast and overdoes the nervous mannerisms and tics of his character. Sheila Hancock gets a brief useless cameo as the grandparent with a little bit of a conscience but again why an English actress in the part? Most glaringly and not for the first time in a war movie with child actors, the audience is expected to accept the kids talking in the plummiest English accents, whilst everyone else in the movie is in the correct German dialect - I can't believe there aren't competent German child actors who don't have a mastery of English - this anachronism, coupled throughout with oddly jarring use of familiar English language phrasing and syntax, further weakens the necessary veracity. And while I'm in a kicking mood, I'll put the boot in too to an over intrusive musical soundtrack. Far too many scenes are overdecorated by the composer's background piano-based trillings - again, for me, for films on this theme, less is more and silence invariably speaks louder than almost any kind of musical accompaniment.
Worst of all is the sheer ridiculousness of the plot. Like the much-praised and in my opinion, equally over-rated "Life is Beautiful", the central premise of the eight year old German and captive Jewish boys meeting and striking up a relationship is too fantastic for words plus they're too often given adult lines to speak. You can see from a long way out that a big tragic finish is in the making and sure enough, we're not disappointed. To be fair, the scenes where the Jewish prisoners, (plus one) are herded like cattle into the gas chambers are sensitively handled but again am I the only person who was mildly offended by the climactic scene where Bruno's parents are shown frantically failing to find and then bewailing afterwards the loss of their beloved son, while hundreds of Jews, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, equally beloved of their own families share the same fate?
Sentimentality and incredible plotting always weaken war movies, no matter how well-meaning their intent and serious the message. This particular movie is guilty on all fronts as far as I'm concerned and failed to move me accordingly.