Powerful and disturbing

Rating: 9/10 (16 November 2008)

English accents coming from the mouth of Nazi soldiers; suggestions of kitsch, exploitation, and Oscar bait; factual incongruities that lead to serious head scratching. These are among the obstacles faced by Mark Herman's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a story of the loss of innocence of a young boy when confronted by the atrocities of the Nazi regime. Yet in spite of these questionable attributes, the film is handled with great sensitivity and delivers a powerful and disturbing movie-going experience that is difficult to shake. Based on a novel (called a "fable") geared to young adults by Irish author John Boyne, the narrative is told from the point of view of eight-year old Bruno, the son of prominent Nazi officer Ralf (David Thewlis).
The film's joyous opening sequence gives no hint of the dark night to follow. Bruno, brilliantly performed by Asa Butterfield, runs through the streets of Berlin with his friends, spreading his arms like wings, unaware that he and his mother (Vera Farmiga) and teenage sister, Gretel (Amber Beattie) will soon be moving from his comfortable surroundings to a villa in the countryside, overlooking a "farm, walled off from the house. In reality, the farm is a Nazi concentration camp, most likely Auschwitz, and Ralf has been promoted to act as commandant. Bored and without playmates, Bruno disregards the many warnings from his mother and adventurously explores the forbidden territory beyond the wall.
When he discovers an emaciated young boy his own age Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) sitting next to a barbed-wired fence wearing what he mistakenly identifies as striped pajamas, Bruno only sees the opportunity for a new friend. Even when Shmuel tells him that he cannot leave to play with him because he is a Jew, he does not draw logical conclusions, nor does he understand why a servant who helps him after he falls from a swinging tire would give up his profession as a doctor to peel potatoes. His mother is aware of the camp but, like millions of others in the world during that time, pretends not to notice and makes no attempt to explain it to Bruno. Her rebellion ultimately takes the form of tears when she learns that the smell from the nearby chimneys is not the burning of rubbish as explained by her husband but something unspeakable.
The numbing conformity imposed on the younger generation is brought into focus when a tutor brought in to school the children in Nazi-oriented history tells Bruno that if he ever found a nice Jew, he would be the greatest explorer in the world. It is also evident when his sister falls for Kotler (Rupert Friend), a brutal German Lieutenant, and plasters her wall with posters of Hitler. To his credit, Herman does not create monsters or stereotypes but recognizable human beings. Ralf is a devoted father who loves his family but is seemingly unaware of the incongruity between the nurturing of innocence at home and destroying it in the name of country. This disparity is made brutally real by the heartbreaking and unforgettable conclusion, which, by allowing us to experience personally the true inhumanity of the holocaust, has the power to point us towards a true awakening.