unprejudiced innocence seen threw a child's eyes

Rating: 9/10 (16 March 2009)

I never heard very much about this movie until I was in the video store and the person in front of me was renting it. The cashier said something along the lines of 'I hope you have a full box of tissues'. I decided to rent it out of curiosity. The movie opens with a stark freedom of children running through Hitler's Germany without a care in the world. It was quite obvious that it was this freedom of childhood that would drive the movie forward. The story is about a German officer and his family who are relocated beside a concentration camp. The movie starts of from the German perspective and how they view the Jewish population. I felt a little unnerved at this point and watched on with a slight trepidation encase there was an underlying attempt of justification of mass genocide. The young boy Bruno meets a boy Shmaul sitting behind an electrified fence of a concentration camp. Immediately a friendship begins. This movie does not just tell us a story, it teaches us a lesson. Through these children's unprejudiced naivety and innocence a possibility is provided. A possibility of hope! If we were to view the world through the eyes of a child then we would be able to saves ourselves from our own inevitable destruction. This movie moves at just the right pace keeping you wonderfully intrigued, then, at the end you witness the most bitter irony and the most devastating tragedy. Recommended!!!