Utterly inspiring

Rating: 10/10 (5 August 2012)

This film is a prodigy of horror wrapped up in love and that horror destroys this love forever by making it eternal in death.
Two eight year old boys meet, one on the free side of the fence, the other one on the camp side of the fence of a "work camp" (a nice name indeed for a Konzentration Kamp) for Jews just when the final solution is introduced. In Germany I will neglect the side of the Commandant of the camp who is a SS and yet also has a personal life, a wife, two children, parents, a father who is on the good side and a mother who is clearly critical. A promotion for a SS officer is to become a camp Commandant and do, under strict secrecy, what is expected from him: to build a better German nation without any Jews, and if possible a world in the image of that German nation.
The film shows very well how the whole ideology is built on propaganda, which is a pack of lies, or ,if you prefer a pack of lying wolves that are after you to get your souls down into hell, in the name of the Greater future of the German nation. There is not much to say about the details of that machine. The details are there, clear and obvious. No comment, just cry with rage at such dumb inhumanity, really for both sides, the German nation itself and their victims.
The film is a lot more interesting with the eight year old son of that SS Commandant who escapes from the home of Herr Kommandant to explore the forest behind the mansion and come to the fence where he discovers an eight year old Jewish boy who is hungry and sad, Shmuel. Shmuel has nothing to learn about the life outside the camp, but the other boy, Bruno, has to discover what the camp is and that it is no YMCA simmer camp. That takes time and a treason in the middle, but boys will be boys and they will invent a project to come together. Since Shmuel cannot come to the outside why not Bruno going into the camp.
And that will be the drama. No survivors please with the final solution, and frankly it's better like that. Which of the two boys could have survived without being damaged for life, or till death ensues.
And the film can end on the tears of the mother and sister and on the despair of the SS Commandant of a father. We will not be given the logical end for him after such a tragedy. Death at times can be sweet and desirable.
This is a masterpiece of poignancy even if suspense (who cares about suspense in a subject we all know by heart and regret with all our hearts) is rather light because boys will be boys and boys have always been boys. And love, or call it friendship if you prefer being a prude, has no limits, no divides, no abyss in the middle. Love is unified by definition and love comes no matter what and is for life and death. Happy are those who can share a life full of discoveries and then a death full of satisfaction. I am afraid the two boys met in death with apprehension and fear but a lot of courage in their acceptance of that fate as being a fate in which they can hold hands, and they did, naked under the fumes of the death-inflicting shower.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU