If you aren’t in the mood for a heavy-hitting movie, stay away from Mark Herman’s 2008 World War II-based drama The Boy In the Striped Pajamas. It stars newcomer Asa Butterfield (The Wolfman, Nanny McPhee Returns) as eight-year-old Bruno, the son of a predominant Nazi official. Despite his protests, he is forced to move from the comforts of his Berlin home to the outskirts of the country so that his father can be closer to the concentration camps that he has been a part of organizing and running.
A bored and curious Bruno notices that there looks to be a farm residing just beyond the high walls of his luxurious house. After a series of observations and questions to his parents, many of which receive half-truths, Bruno decides to learn more about “the farm.” He meets Shumel, an eight-year-old boy on “the farm” inside a barbed-wire fence. Shmuel wears striped pajamas with a number on them, and Bruno assumes his number is part of a game. While Shmuel isn’t as innocent/naive as Bruno, he still doesn’t completely understand what is happening around him daily. The two boys develop a friendship unknown to any of the other characters in the movie, despite Shumel being a Jew and Bruno being the son of a Nazi official. While we slowly begin to see that Bruno knows that everything isn’t what it appears to be. And despite everyone hearing that every Jew is terrible, he can’t see any bad qualities in his friend Shmuel.
It would be best to suspend your beliefs to buy into parts of the movie. On the other hand, the innate wholeness of the relationship between two young boys that the adults force influences their lives that they should hate each other. Each struggles with the emotions of what they feel and what they are supposed to feel. The innocence of each of the boys is something that I slowly bought into with each passing scene.
The horrors of concentration camps during the 1930s and 1940s were real. And while the storyline probably would never have happened, the emotions felt by all characters (the boys, Bruno’s, at times, emotionless Nazi father, Bruno’s protective and loving mother, and the Jewish enslaved people) are real and believable.
This movie is based on a book of the same name by writer John Boyne. The book has sold over five million copies and could eventually replace Elie Weisel’s Night as the Holocaust book to be read by the next generation. Night goes down as one of my top 10 books of all time. Since this comparison has been made, I will one day be reading The Boy In the Striped Pajamas.
Plot 8/10
Character Development 8.5/10
Character Chemistry8.5/10
Acting 8/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 8/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 8/10
Hook and Reel 7.5/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
83.5%