Movie Review: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
World War II Children's Movie More of an Adult Film
Dec 19, 2008
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is not a typical Hollywood family movie. It’s not about a boy befriending a loveable dog who changes the lives of everyone they meet. It’s not about a boy wizard encountering dragons and practicing magic spells. No, it’s about the extermination of Jewish people during World War II.
But there is a boy, an eight-year old named Bruno (Asa Butterfield). He’s unhappy that his family had to move away from their home in Berlin to a new place in the “countryside” after his father (David Thewlis) is promoted. Unbeknownst to Bruno, his father’s promotion is to a Nazi concentration camp near their new home.
Bruno explores the new home and surrounding property with the innocence and ignorance expected of an eight-year old. He sees things but doesn’t understand them – like the strange “farmers” who wear striped pajamas on the other side of a barbed wire fence visible from his bedroom window.
Eventually, Bruno befriends another eight-year old boy who lives on the “farm”, and he wanders outside the family’s property to see the boy (a young Jew named Shmuel) and talk with him through the fence.
Film Likely to Generate Questions from Younger Viewers
It’s certainly an interesting idea for a story, but whether or not it makes an appropriate family movie is debatable. Lisa Schwarzbaum calls the film a “Holocaust-for-kids fable” in the November 14 issue of Entertainment Weekly. However, there is just too much that kids won’t grasp in this WWII tale.
Adults might get an uneasy feeling watching the scene where Bruno’s 12-year old sister Gretal (Amber Beattie) plasters Nazi propaganda on her bedroom wall like a modern girl would hang up Justin Timberlake posters, but an accompanying child probably won’t blink an eye at this image.
Nor would a child be likely to catch the obvious metaphor found in the naked plastic dolls that Bruno finds piled up like trash in the basement.
Herein lies a problem with the film. Nothing objectionable is ever said or shown, and great care is taken to conceal the awful truth from Bruno throughout the movie – when he asks what the smoke coming from the big chimneys next door is from, his father replies “I think they just burn rubbish there sometimes” – but this will undoubtedly leave younger viewers equally clueless about the terrible things happening off screen.
That is, until the ending. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas may just have the most poignant final moments of any film this year. The surprising twist will likely have kids asking a handful of questions to parents distracted by the queasiness they feel after exiting the theater.
Anyone who doesn’t feel up to fielding those questions and explaining the Holocaust to a child after a night at the movies might want to reconsider buying the family tickets to this one.
Score: 8 out of 10
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