THE BOY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS

The 8-year-old son (Asa Butterfield) of a Nazi concentration camp commander (David Thewlis) befriends a captive Jewish boy (Jack Scanlon) and is gradually exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust. Writer-director Mark Herman's luminous screen version of John Boyne's award-winning novel for both children and adults contrasts its protagonist's innocence with the brutal irrationality of the events he uncomprehendingly witnesses. Mature thematic material, including a disturbing but nongraphic mass extermination scene. A-II -- adults and adolescents. (PG-13) 2008
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Full Review)
The heart-rending paradox central to the Holocaust-themed fable "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" (Miramax) is symbolized by its opening montage.After pulling away from a fluttering Nazi banner, the camera follows a carefree group of German children, their arms outstretched to imitate planes, as they run through the streets of Berlin and eventually pass, without pause, an apartment building whose Jewish residents are being deported.
At the head of this heedless parade is 8-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield), who arrives home to find his mother (Vera Farmiga) preparing for a party. Bruno's SS officer father (David Thewlis) has been promoted and the family, Bruno is crestfallen to learn, is moving to Dad's new command. By contrast to their warm, old-fashioned Berlin residence, their new house is a suggestively forbidding Modernist affair surrounded by woods.
Isolated and bored, Bruno is also confused by the sight, glimpsed from his bedroom window, of what he takes to be a nearby farm populated by people who wear their pajamas all day. It is, of course, a concentration camp and, though forbidden to do so by his mother, Bruno goes exploring. Eventually, he comes upon Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a sickly looking boy whom he befriends despite the electric fence that separates them.
Though Shmuel tries to describe life in the camp, Bruno cannot associate his seemingly gentle father with such inhumanity. He's further perplexed when his father sits calmly by while their timid servant, Pavel (David Hayman) -- whose "pajamas" can be seen under his street clothes -- is hauled off to a nearby room and beaten (off camera) by his father's frightening aide, Lt. Kotler (Rupert Friend).
The juxtaposition of everyday life with the most debased attack on human dignity is further emphasized when Bruno's sister, Gretel (Amber Beattie), prays at bedtime for the sick and the poor and when his mother -- in a moment Farmiga enacts with beautiful subtlety -- reluctantly thanks Pavel, a former doctor, for helping Bruno after a fall.
Bruno's wide, unintentionally accusing eyes take in everything, as his interaction with both Pavel and Shmuel belies the vicious anti-Semitism of his tutor, Herr Liszt (Jim Norton).In his luminous adaptation of Irish writer John Boyne's 2006 novel, which won both that nation's Children's Book of the Year and People's Choice Book of the Year awards, writer-director Mark Herman contrasts his protagonist's innocence with the brutal irrationality of the events he uncomprehendingly witnesses.
The emotionally gripping climactic scene, though unsettling and more than a little improbable, is discreetly handled and therefore palatable, and brings this humane parable of universal equality to an appropriate, if harrowing, end.The film contains mature thematic material, including a disturbing but nongraphic mass extermination scene. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II -- adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
The 8-year-old son (Asa Butterfield) of a Nazi concentration camp commander (David Thewlis) befriends a captive Jewish boy (Jack Scanlon) and is gradually exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust. Writer-director Mark Herman's luminous screen version of John Boyne's award-winning novel for both children and adults contrasts its protagonist's innocence with the brutal irrationality of the events he uncomprehendingly witnesses. Mature thematic material, including a disturbing but nongraphic mass extermination scene. A-II -- adults and adolescents. (PG-13) 2008
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Full Review)
The heart-rending paradox central to the Holocaust-themed fable "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" (Miramax) is symbolized by its opening montage.After pulling away from a fluttering Nazi banner, the camera follows a carefree group of German children, their arms outstretched to imitate planes, as they run through the streets of Berlin and eventually pass, without pause, an apartment building whose Jewish residents are being deported.
At the head of this heedless parade is 8-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield), who arrives home to find his mother (Vera Farmiga) preparing for a party. Bruno's SS officer father (David Thewlis) has been promoted and the family, Bruno is crestfallen to learn, is moving to Dad's new command. By contrast to their warm, old-fashioned Berlin residence, their new house is a suggestively forbidding Modernist affair surrounded by woods.
Isolated and bored, Bruno is also confused by the sight, glimpsed from his bedroom window, of what he takes to be a nearby farm populated by people who wear their pajamas all day. It is, of course, a concentration camp and, though forbidden to do so by his mother, Bruno goes exploring. Eventually, he comes upon Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a sickly looking boy whom he befriends despite the electric fence that separates them.
Though Shmuel tries to describe life in the camp, Bruno cannot associate his seemingly gentle father with such inhumanity. He's further perplexed when his father sits calmly by while their timid servant, Pavel (David Hayman) -- whose "pajamas" can be seen under his street clothes -- is hauled off to a nearby room and beaten (off camera) by his father's frightening aide, Lt. Kotler (Rupert Friend).
The juxtaposition of everyday life with the most debased attack on human dignity is further emphasized when Bruno's sister, Gretel (Amber Beattie), prays at bedtime for the sick and the poor and when his mother -- in a moment Farmiga enacts with beautiful subtlety -- reluctantly thanks Pavel, a former doctor, for helping Bruno after a fall.
Bruno's wide, unintentionally accusing eyes take in everything, as his interaction with both Pavel and Shmuel belies the vicious anti-Semitism of his tutor, Herr Liszt (Jim Norton).In his luminous adaptation of Irish writer John Boyne's 2006 novel, which won both that nation's Children's Book of the Year and People's Choice Book of the Year awards, writer-director Mark Herman contrasts his protagonist's innocence with the brutal irrationality of the events he uncomprehendingly witnesses.
The emotionally gripping climactic scene, though unsettling and more than a little improbable, is discreetly handled and therefore palatable, and brings this humane parable of universal equality to an appropriate, if harrowing, end.The film contains mature thematic material, including a disturbing but nongraphic mass extermination scene. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II -- adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.