Familiar Pajamas Still Packs an Emotional Punch
Bruno’s (Asa Butterfield) proud and nationalistic Father (David Thewlis) has just been given a promotion by the German High Command. He’s taking the boy, his Mother (Vera Farmiga) and his older sister Gretel (Amber Beattie) into the countryside so he can oversee a work camp, the eight-year-old distraught that he has to leave all his friends behind.
Jack Scanlon and Asa Butterfield in Miramax Films' The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
From his room he can see the razor wire confines of what he can only assumes is some sort of farm, the workers there all trudging around wearing strange gray striped pajamas. Against his mother’s orders, Bruno sneaks out of their new home and makes his way towards the back of the camp, befriending a boy named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) residing behind the wire. With inhuman tragedy raging behind them, these two small figures forge an unlikely friendship, the bonds of it tested beyond any and all remotely rational comprehension.
Based on the acclaimed novel by John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a very good drama I will probably never, ever watch again. Maybe that makes me a bad critic, I do not know.
What I do know is that Holocaust movies have their place, especially when they are made with as much delicacy and skill as this one. But I also know that stories of the inevitable – whether you’ve read the book or not it isn’t a shock where this tale is heading – do not tend to interest me, and watching man’s inhumanity to man played upon the fates of small children is almost too much for me to bear.
That personal reveal aside, when I say that this is a solid film discriminating viewers would be well worth taking the time to see I really do mean it. British director and screenwriter Mark Herman (Brassed Off, Little Voice) has crafted his most accomplished work to day, the filmmaker employing a skillfully subtle hand missing from the majority of his previous features. It is almost as if the story itself has forced him to eschew his usual penchant for layering on the sentimentality, the schmaltzy gloss weakening his earlier efforts gone seemingly without a trace.
And that’s a good thing, because if any movie had the potential to be a maudlin didactic dirge this one had to be it. Watching the Nazi’s engage in their putrid genocide as seen through the eyes of boy could have been sickening, the potential for oversimplifying the story’s darkly complex themes almost greater than the sum total of the United State’s national debt.
In almost every scene, young Butterfield is remarkable as Bruno. The actor does a glorious job of tapping right into the center of the boy’s wide-eyed clueless innocence, and watching his loving gaze slowly morph into something else entirely is altogether gut-wrenching.
The adult actors are also quite good, Thewlis crafting Father as both a loving family man devoted to his wife and children as well as a heinous Nazi party stooge so certain in his superiors’ authority questioning their murderous orders doesn’t even enter his mind. The radiant Farmiga might be even better, her slow dissolve as she comes to realize exactly what the work camp is for, as well as the urgent need to make sure Bruno doesn’t discover the truth, both despicable and admirable all in the same breath.
As good as it all is, the fact there isn’t even the first hint the the picture is heading to a conclusion other than a terribly obvious one creates a bit of a problem. As valuable as this WWII history lesson (obvious historical distortions aside) can be, and as emotionally shattering as the melodrama gets, the fact I knew from scene one at the countryside chateau where this was heading made getting there at times a bit of a rough ride.
Yet I still think The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is worth the effort. While I probably won’t be willing to watch it again, the film is just so well acted and directed I can’t very well dismiss it completely out of hand. And while the conclusion isn’t a mystery, that doesn’t make witnessing it any less profound or powerful, the tears I shed in the final moments as heartfelt and as genuine as any I’ve probably cried this year.
