An insightful movie on inhumanity

Rating: 8/10 (2 September 2009)

This week, I sat through 3 films centred on the Nazis and Jews during WWII - "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas", "Defiance" and "Good". Of the 3, this is by far the superior movie. "Good" just wasn't very good. "Defiance" suffered from being overlong, of dubious historical accuracy, and from a typical Edward Zwick Boys' Own Adventure ending, a throwback to the old Cowboys and Indians battles with the cavalry riding to the rescue.
"The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas", on the other hand, contained a gut-wrenching, powerful ending. The film provided insight into the psychology of Nazi concentration camp commanders. To Bruno's Dad, the Jews are "not really people" (in "Good", they're called "items"). Like a factory manager, he pores over plans to expand the gas chambers and "triple the throughput". I've read of Nazis at the train stations, separating families, tearing children from their parents, regarding the beings under their control as simply animals.
It's a typical protective psychological response, apparently. Battles in the Pacific were more vicious and caused proportionately greater casualties, because the Americans and Japanese each convinced themselves that their enemy was some kind of sub-human species and should be obliterated from the face of the earth.
Executioners and abattoir slaughtermen use the same mechanism, concentrating on the process of disposal, upon the technicalities of the job, rather than on the fact of the living being that they are dealing with, who will soon no longer be living.
Only at the end does the horror and suffering and inhumanity of the gas chambers strike home to Bruno's father. The film's been criticised for not tying up all the loose ends, but I think it's irrelevant. Will the Dad strike out at the Jews in revenge? Will he throw over the job and end up in a shallow grave with the rest of his family? It doesn't matter. The film's point has been made, extremely well in my opinion. The ease with which the kids can conduct their relationship may stretch the bounds of credibility, but the basic premise is a good one, and the acting is terrific. An 8/10.