Just the innocents always pay the price

Rating: 8/10 (6 February 2011)

That's an intense and dramatic story set in the WWII about a little boy, BRUNO, son of a Nazi official commandant of a concentration camp, that doesn't understand why the "farmers" that live next to his home wear strange pajamas (of course these "farmers" only exist in his innocent imagination, as they are the prisoners of the camp). So, his curiosity (BRUNO claims himself as an explorer!), takes him to go next to the camp borders and meet a new friend, SHMUEL, a Jewish kid. Without the consent of his parents he starts visiting his new friend regularly, taking him some food. Their friendship starts growing until one day that SHMUEL's father disappears and BRUNO decides to help him to search his father
It's a story of innocence set in a time and place of cruelty and completely disrespect for the Human life.
I think the plot is very well built because it starts leading us to think it's just child' playing, completely innocent and harmless, but in fact it takes us to an ending of tragic and dramatic events.
The characters are also good. There aren't plenty in this movie, but each one of them represent very well a different type of "person of that period". I mean BRUNO's father, the commandant, is a man of the regime. He's a convicted Nazi that thinks the elimination of the Jews will make Germany stronger and prosperous. His wife, in opposition, is the kind of person that is submissive, but is against Nazi's ideals and its cruel methods. BRUNO's sister, GRETEL, is the typical young teenager that is start "waking up to the world outside", leaving childhood, but she's educated under those rules and those Nazi ideals, thinking any Jew is an enemy just because he's Jew; she represents those who belonged to "Hitlerjugend". PAVEL, a Jewish prisoner that works as a slave in their house, he used to be a doctor and now he's just treated like a dog! SHMUEL, the Jewish kid, represents all the prisoners and the Jewish victims; and finally BRUNO, a little kid, too naïf to understand the cruel reality that surrounds him. He represents the innocence and the goodness that exist in the Human soul when it's not corrupted by absurd ideals.
As told the end was quite dramatic and intense, but I appreciated it though. In my opinion the final scene was a nice way to "shock" the viewer and to let us thinking that just the innocents always pay the price