Everett, Wash. Published: Friday, November 7, 2008
Holocaust tale most useful as teaching tool
By Robert Horton Herald Movie Critic
A useful example of a well-meaning but inert movie, "The Boy in Striped Pajamas" will probably have a long life as a teaching tool, a sort of Young Person's Guide to the Holocaust.
Based on a novel by John Boyne, the film is mostly seen from the perspective of an 8-year-old boy, Bruno (Asa Butterfield). He lives with his parents (the very capable David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga) in wartime Berlin, until the father, a loyal Nazi officer, is transferred to duty at a concentration camp.
Bruno has no idea of the meaning of the camp. He wanders over to a secluded area of the barbed wire fence and befriends a lonely boy on the other side, Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), who's about his age.
The film is arranged around Bruno's visits with Shmuel. A crucial problem arises here: the utter lack of any kind of dawning realization on Bruno's part that maybe this camp isn't the farm his father says it is.
The fact of meeting a boy in striped prison garb whose head is shaved might be the first clue (well, the second, after the barbed wire fence). The plot also relies on Shmuel somehow not disclosing the horrible conditions of the camp to Bruno.
I had a real problem with this aspect of the movie -- the dumber Bruno is about the situation around him, the harder it is to go on his journey with him. Plus, he almost serves as a stand-in for the ordinary people of the era who later claimed to have no knowledge of what was going on in the extermination camps.
It leads to a truly horrifying conclusion, no question about it. Boyne and director Mark Herman ("Brassed Off") don't hold much back -- although the melodrama of the final reels leaves behind a strong distaste, considering the setting.
I can see how this, in a young person's novel, would be instructive. In a movie, it just feels forced.
