One of these instances when the last ten minutes of a movie elevate it to a haunting level of greatness.

Rating: 8/10 (13 May 2016)

Mark Herman's "Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" doesn't quite prepare you to how great it is, simply because everything happens in the end, and gives its full meaning to the poignant but rather predictable material featured in the first two acts.
And watching this movie, I knew I would find comments on IMDb echoing my sentiment. After that extraordinary climax, I just told my wife: "this is the best ending the film could ever have", and by that, I meant the most logical and satisfying. She thought the film would show something more after that painful shot on the outside of the gas chamber and the remaining clothes, but I knew the film would immediately close, as it had made its point, and quite a powerful one. It's really one of these instances when the last ten minutes of a movie elevate it to a haunting level of greatness.
Yes, the film is about a German boy, Bruno (played by Asa Butterfield) who doesn't know the extents of the atrocities committed by the very men he worships (or used to), including his father, which all naturally leads him to befriend a Jewish kid in a death camp, named Schmuel. Yes, childhood innocence at wartime and unlikely friendships are very common themes, and even the encounters between the two boys, at each side of barbed wire fences, doesn't really strike for its originality, but it's all in the last ten minutes, when Bruno dies in the gas chamber, with his friend and other men.
And it's not about being happy for Bruno's death but since it was the worst punishment his father (David Thewlis) could ever have, yes it was a worthy sacrifice from a pure 'Karma' standpoint, in order to inflict the heartless officer what he's been routinely conducting toward innocent people. Even worse for him, is that the death of his son could have been easily avoided, if he had simply told him what the camp was about, and what they were doing there. Sure, that would have tarnished Bruno's admiration but he would have thought twice before playing games near the camp. And this is where the characterization of Bruno works and his fate, although tragic, is a great pay-off.
Bruno is shown as a rather detached and solitary kid, less passionate and fanatic than his sister Gretel, but he's not all brave and courageous for all that, just curious and sweet. The title with the 'pyjama' description is a hint that the story is seen from an innocent child's perspective. And when Bruno is confronted to that young officer's anger, he denies being Schmuel's friend, which is a rather cowardly move. And even when he enters the camp, he seems very reluctant, so it must have taken one hell of a blind courage to ignore the risks of setting a foot in a camp. And this is the point: Bruno couldn't realize it, not because he was blind, but because he was blinded.
The Germans supposedly ignored what happened in the Camp, so that when the Allies and Russians liberated them, they were shocked to discover the truth. Even the news report of a camp was pure propaganda, showing healthy prisoners eating and playing football. The German people believed it, because they wanted to believe it, they didn't want to think their leaders were Barbarians. And Bruno illustrates that mindset, when he sees the newsreel, he goes hug his father, suddenly becoming a good man who takes care of war prisoners. He was blinded by the propaganda, by his father's lies and also by his love as a son, as the Germans loved (for most of them) Hitler. It takes a believer to lie.
As for the liar, Bruno's father knew what he did and we can wonder, if he's so proud of his actions and so confident that they're meant to save the German motherland, so why doesn't he openly talk about it? is it guilt or shame? No, pure denial. Denying people their right to live and exist, and denying that these actions are innately evil. The father is so wrapped up in that evil madness that he hypocritically kills people believing it's good while hiding this reality to his son, as if it wasn't so good. And this is where you reach the genius of the film, almost imperceptible, because it doesn't feel like a Spielberg or Polanski's super-production.
Indeed, the soul of this film is an evil one. Sure, the father could have come at the last minute, or the shower be a real shower, like in "Schindler's List", but the father's arc had to be closed that way. He was the antagonist of the film, and the two kids' sacrifices the tool Destiny or Karma or God used to punish him. In fact, the film works like a reverse "Life is Beautiful", while Benigni pretended it was a game to keep his son's innocence and save his life, in "The Boy in Striped Pyjamas", the reality of the death camp is ignored by Bruno, and his maintained innocence ironically seals his fate.
It's a tragic film but the irony is delightful because the father is responsible for his kids' obliviousness to the danger of the camp. And there's more to that, it is often asked how come the prisoners never fought or how come the Jews let themselves being arrested. Apart from the fact that this question ignores some heroic resistances, it also shows the sad reality, many of the Jewish people who died in these camps didn't know they would die, or that it would go as far as being separated from their families and put in gas chambers. And when you think about it, Bruno and even Schmuel, had the same mindset.
Anything could happen, but death... yet it did, it was the most tragically satisfying ending the film could get.