what's the message?

Rating: 5/10 (31 May 2011)

I will get right to the 'riveting climax' of this movie. So don't read any further if you want to see it. This will contain spoilers. The child son of a Nazi war criminal (Bruno) befriends a child camp victim (Schmuel). The climax, Bruno (though uncorrupted by the teachings, and obviously a good soul) enters the camp to help Schmuel find his lost father, dressed as an incarcerated Jew. Wrong place and the wrong time, (not that it ever could be the right place), but Bruno and Schmuel enter a barrack of prisoners and are shuffled to the gas chamber and Bruno, Schmuel. In the meantime, the Nazi general father of Bruno realizes where his son is, and desperately but futilely enters the camp yelling for Bruno, in an attempt to save him.
I ask, of you, who are so filled with emotion...What if Bruno didn't die? Only Schmuel....would the movie been any less tragic? I found this movie unstirring, as if I should be more emotional that the child of a Nazi war criminal died an unlucky death in a matter of minutes, while Schmuel lived and suffered the horrors of the camp for years. If the message was a wakeup call to the Nazi father, i.e. how's it feel? Does aryan blood burn differently from Jew blood, a quote from the movie in fact....That might be an acceptable message. A taste of the Nazi's own medicine. But I don't think that was the message at all. It's a sad message if we are somehow meant to sympathize more for the child of a nazi war criminal than the millions of Jewish children who were incinerated, gassed and tortured. BAd movie, horrible that anyone could be stirred to emotion by this film.