It is most certainly flawed, but The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is likely to make this harrowing chapter of history more accessible for some children.

Rating: 6/10 (10 September 2014)

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas serves as an introduction for children to Nazism and the Holocaust; it covers quite a broad range of elements integral to Nazi Germany such as institutional racism, nationalism and indoctrination, albeit in a juvenile, contrived and ultimately implausible manner.
The film charts the relationship between Bruno (Asa Butterfield), a German 8-year-old and Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a young Jewish boy. Bruno is the son of Ralf (David Thewlis), the SS Commandant of a nearby concentration camp in which Shmuel lives, and Elsa (Vera Farmiga), who is largely ignorant of the Jewish persecution her husband is responsible for.
The inquisitive, innocent Bruno first meets the titular boy in striped pyjamas when he stumbles across the camp perimeter next to the woods that surround his house. Bruno is puzzled by Shmuel's predicament, he doesn't understand why soldiers are 'taking their clothes away for no reason' or why Pavel, a former doctor, carries out medial tasks in their home. As he repeatedly visits Shmuel and develops a friendship with him, his confusion soon turns to indignation.
Clearly, their relationship is unrealistic. The abhorrent reality is that the majority of children were killed immediately upon arrival at the camps, and even as a child who either somehow slipped through the net or was deemed useful, it is very unlikely that Shmuel could escape his oppressors' eyeshot so many times to speak with Bruno.
I found the boys' exchanges to be quite contrived, much of their conversation made for awkward viewing. However, I would be interested to see a child's reaction to it, I think I am simply the wrong audience for the film. Considering his age, Asa Butterfield is a decent young actor, he has the potential to be a star. Scanlon, however, was quite stilted as Shmuel.
A big problem with the two boys' relationship and indeed the whole cast are the English accents, it seriously affected the credibility of the characters. Even Vera Farmiga, an American woman, gives her German character an English accent, which she does very well incidentally. I'm sure the film's adult cast members were more than capable of at least hints of German or Eastern European, but attempts to do so by Butterfield or Scanlon would most probably have been risible.
The most villainous and unlikable character of the film is probably Kurt Kotler (Rupert Friend), but he's also something of a caricature. With his chiselled jaw, blond hair, blue eyes and immaculate uniform, he is the personification of the somewhat homoerotic Nazi dream of Aryan supremacy. The problem is that instead of him being a compelling example of a Nazi propaganda poster-boy, Friend's character is an example of the clichÃ©d 'Ve have vays ov making you talk' Nazi stock-character. And of course, Friend makes no attempt to Germanise his English accent, which meant I just couldn't believe in him. The film's accepted presence of Anglo accents is the result of British luvvies' received pronunciation in decades of sword-and- sandal epics and various other films about European history. It's quite flattering I suppose, the English accent must have a certain gravitas and authenticity that audiences respond well to.
With implausible characters and relationships, some viewers may begin to lose hope as the The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas descends into a sophomoric history lesson. However, it completely batters you with its shocking, powerful twist of a denouement - seldom have I seen a film picked up so greatly by its final minutes.
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