Wonderfully moving

Rating: 10/10 (11 November 2009)

I loved this film - it was so simple, yet so real. It shows childhood so truthfully. Friendship, betrayal, guilt, redemption, sacrifice... children experience all these things. This film shows this against the situation of a concentration camp, which just highlights the essence of these universal human emotions. The young boy denies his friend and so experiences his first sense of responsibility. Instead of playing games of fantasy and wish-fulfillment, he enters a world where true friendship means solidarity with another. This story transcends the setting. It is not focused on the cruelty of man to man, the mindless destruction of the holocaust, but is focused on the more meaningful relationships that bound people. That the young boy is the commandant's son is a profound irony that affirms the common humanity of us all, before society has brainwashed us to hate.