David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga, Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, Rupert Friend
Mark Herman (based upon book by John Boyne)
Rated PG-13
94 Mins.
Miramax
It is several hours after I have attended a press screening for "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," the opening night film for the 2008 Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis, Indiana.
I cannot shake the images from my mind.
Based upon a novel by John Boyne that was primarily directed at children, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is the story of a most extraordinary friendship between two 8-year-old boys, Bruno (Asa Butterfield, "Son of Rambow") and Shmuel (Jack Scanlon).
Bruno, you see, is the son of a fierce, dutiful concentration camp commandant (David Thewlis, of the "Harry Potter" films) during the holocaust...Shmuel is a young boy that Bruno meets one day while exploring the forbidden areas behind the new family home that curiously overlooks a mysterious "farm" and people who appear to dress in pajamas.
I have long professed my love for British family films. British family films are far more intelligent, far less "busy" and they simply don't condescend to children or families.
Is it possible to make a family film about the holocaust? If "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" was an American film, it would undoubtedly become a sentimental, weepy film or would simply dissolve into a sea of manipulation. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" avoids these manipulations of the story and, rather courageously, presents the story of this friendship with great realism and stark truth.
"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is a mesmerizing film that has left me pondering its images, its words and its actions long after I have left the theatre.
Seldom have I seen such truth and such innocence embraced by such harrowing imagery.
Given that Disney owns Miramax, some have expressed concern about the "Disneyification" of this story...rest assured, the studio's release of this film "as is" is a bold, courageous and I dare say not so market friendly gesture.
"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," as directed by Mark Herman ("Little Voice"), avoids Hollywood stylings and glossings over. While the film does simplify the holocaust, much to the dismay of some historians, it does so solely by seeing the holocaust through the eyes of 8-year-olds who seem almost impossibly naive.
We are introduced to young Bruno as he and his young friends are mock "flying" around the sidewalks of Berlin. It becomes obviously right away that something is amiss...while the young boys innocently play, Jews in the background are being carted away. Bruno is oblivious to the world around him, protected as he is by being the son of a rising German soldier. Even when the family relocates to the countryside estate that overlooks the concentration camp, Bruno remains ignorant to the true devastation that surrounds him. His innocent inquiries about the farmers, the pajamas, the heavily smoking chimneys, the horrid smells and the unusual stories of those who surround him are typically met with minimal, if any, explanation.
When he meets Shmuel, who is sitting alone on the other side of a barbed wire fence, he believes the young boy to be playing some kind of game in his pajamas with a number on them.
I am heartbroken, even now, simply remembering the words exchanged between the two boys.
"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is undoubtedly not a film that every child should view, and I would strongly recommend that children view it in the company of a parent or adult who can help process the often intense words and imagery contained within this PG-13 rated film. Some might say this film is far TOO heavy for children...I disagree. Children who have been able to view the cartoon violence of "The Dark Knight" or "Iron Man" would do well to see the real impact of hatred, violence and prejudice contained within this film.
Is it devastating? Absolutely. It is also the truth.
As the two young boys, Asa Butterfield and Jack Scanlon are stellar in their ability to evoke complete and utter innocence despite the world that surrounds them. As the film winds down, this blend of innocence with stark reality is astounding to watch unfold. Blind to a full understanding of what surrounds them, the two children enter their friendship seemingly unaware of what it all means and where it's all headed.
Nearly as harrowing as watching the friendship of these two young boys unfold is observing Bruno and his family as it becomes more and more obvious the full spectrum of what is going on around them.
While Herman wisely avoids the "Disneyification" of this film, so too he avoids painting anyone with broad strokes of evil or good. As Bruno's father, David Thewlis is astounding as a man who does, it seems, truly love his family and yet is completely blinded by duty and nationalism. Initially, his wife (Vera Farmiga, "The Departed") is fiercely loyal and speaks disparaging of the Jews...yet, over time, the entire plot unfolds and she begans to see an evil within her husband she never new existed. Farmiga's transformation from dutiful wife to destroyed mother and spouse, especially towards the end, is devastating. Finally, Amber Beattie is spot-on perfect as Bruno's older sister, a young girl who is both easily influenced towards supporting Hitler while remaining tenderly protective of her brother.
The supporting cast shines, as well, including Rupert Friend as an up-and-coming lieutenant with a secret of his own, Cara Horgan as a house maid/caregiver, and David Hayman's portrayal of an older, ill-fated Jew.
James Horner's original score is exemplary, and the production design of Martin Childs perfectly blends elements of innocence within the stark surroundings.
After receiving its North American premiere as the opening night film of Indianapolis's Heartland Film Festival, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is scheduled for a limited nationwide release on November 7, 2008.
By no means an easy film to view, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" may very well be 2008's most important family film. Simply, yet with integrity, Mark Herman has created what is easily one of 2008's best family films and a film that will evoke a wide array of thoughts, emotions and conversations from audience members of all ages.
by Richard Propes The Independent Critic Copyright 2008
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(BB, C, L, V, S, N, A, D, M) Strong moral worldview in a pronounced morality story, with the message that evil destroys itself, where Nazi concentration camp commandant loses his son to the evil system he helped establish with some Christian prayers and a funeral but they are made by or focus on the NAZI villains; one light profanity and comments saying “dirty Jew” and other anti-Semitic slurs; off-screen violence with intense sounds of beating a Jewish servant and showing the impact of a beaten Jewish boy, skinned knee, and a gas chamber scene with cyanide pellets being dropped on naked men and boys, then sounds of people trying to get out of the gas chamber; no sexual behavior, although a few light references; upper male nudity from the back; alcohol use; smoking; and, lying, deception, propaganda movie about concentration camps, and betrayal.
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS opens with 8-year-old Bruno playing with his friends on the streets of Berlin while National Socialist Swastika flags wave in the breeze. When he gets home, his father, a Nazi officer, says he has just been promoted. He tells Bruno and his sister, Gretel, that they will be leaving their beautiful home in Berlin.
Bruno does not want to leave his friends. His mother throws a big going away party. The next day, they travel to a lonely mansion in the middle of nowhere. Through his window, Bruno can see a farm nearby where all the residents are wearing striped pajamas. His father is the commandant of the concentration camp, but all the commandants are sworn to secrecy not to tell anybody what they do.
Bruno is very bored. Being an explorer at heart, he eventually sneaks over to the concentration camp, where he talks through the electrified barbed wire to a Jewish boy named Shmuel. Bruno and Shmuel become fast friends. Bruno steals food from his own kitchen to give to Shmuel.
Bruno’s sister, by the way, takes an interest in a handsome young lieutenant, who is a hyper anti-Semitic National Socialist. An old Jewish man who works in the kitchen takes care of Bruno when he falls and skins his knee. He turns out to be a doctor. The lieutenant beats the man to a pulp when he makes a mistake serving the family at dinner.
Bruno’s mother becomes increasingly depressed, and the lieutenant lets slip that the burning smoke stacks smell bad because they smell worse when they are burned than when they are alive. Their father and the tutor try to teach Bruno and Gretel how vile and evil Jews are, but Bruno cannot believe it because of his best friend Shmuel.
Eventually, the mother becomes so depressed and the family becomes so strained by their proximity to the extermination camp, that the father decides to send them away. Feeling guilty that he’s already betrayed his friend Shmuel once when he let Shmuel take a beating for a cupcake Bruno gave him, Bruno decides to dig his way into the extermination camp to help Shmuel find his father. In the camp, the mechanical clockwork of the business of extermination sweeps Bruno along toward the inevitability of the gas chamber.
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS is based on a best-selling children’s book. In the press notes, David Heyman, the producer behind the Harry Potter franchise and Mark Herman, the screenwriter, both discuss how difficult it was to make the book into a movie. The book is intended to help children remember the Holocaust. It is a morality story proving the biblical principle that the wages of sin are death.
However the story works as a book, its transformation into a movie produces a disappointing, depressing, hopeless, one-note film. Although the acting and production quality are good, the story seems slow at points because, as they say, it is on the nose or too obvious, too preachy and too clear about the points it is trying to make. It leaves no room for imagination. From the beginning, the story is weighed down by an impending sense of doom.
Books are hard to turn into movies. THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMSAS has a good message and a good heart and may get an A for effort. But, it’s hard to imagine people will want to go to a movie to be slowly depressed.
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Movie & TV reviews for parents
The boy in the striped pajamas.
Based on 62 parent reviews
Report this review, very sad film.
This title has:
Very sad but my kids loved.
This movie is based on the novel (historical fiction) by John Boyne. Set in World War II, the Holocaust drama relates the horror of a Nazi extermination camp through the eyes of a young boy. The movie revolves around an eight-year-old boy whose father has just been promoted to commandant of the German army. Hence the family moves from berlin to the residence near a concentration camp of which his father was in charge.
The movie “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” is based on the novel (historical fiction) by John Boyne. Set in World War II, the Holocaust drama relates the horror of a Nazi extermination camp through the eyes of a young boy. The movie revolves around an eight-year-old boy whose father has just been promoted to commandant of the German army. Hence the family moves from berlin to the residence near a concentration camp of which his father was in charge.
The boy, Bruno was quite unhappy and lonely because of separating from his friends and school. On the very first day in the new house, while chatting with the maid who was unpacking his stuff he shared his misery but the maid being quite positive exclaimed “sitting around miserable all day won’t make you any happier.”
The little boy meant it and started to explore fun and happiness in the things around him. Although he was quite unsuccessful in the starting as there were restrictions too, especially, from his mother as she doesn’t want her child to be exposed to the surroundings, in other words, to the state-sponsored persecution and murder of millions of Jews which his own father was also a part. His repetitious schedule in the first week made him answer to his father rather in this way.
Father: “What have you guys done today?”
Bruno: “Same as yesterday”.
Father: “And what have you done yesterday?”
Bruno: “Same as the day before”.
A few days later, the unhappy and lonely boy Bruno while wandering in the garden discovers a way out to the camp, which he mistook for a farm. As he reaches closer to it, met a Jewish boy, Shmuel of the same age. Although the two were separated by a barbed-wire fence, begin with a forbidden friendship oblivious to the real nature of their surroundings. The surroundings in which a human was seen through the cast of his religion and was been denied the basic right to live. But it does not affect these two as they were still too young to understand the basis of discrimination and only see that some things are inappropriate in the first place as there is no fitting logic or reason behind doing them.
The movie showcases the innocence of these two children and the influence of politics (the political culture and socialization) on their lives. How people are being denied to be considered even as human and how people outside do not object to the maltreatment or ill-treatment caused to a whole community including the inhumane activities leading to ethnic cleansing.
Moreover, the intrusion in the education system and framing of the mindset of the next generations that has the motto to sow the seed of hatred in the heart of people towards another community was the most horrible thing which was shown in the movie. Basically, we can find that antisemitism i.e., the hatred of or prejudice against Jews was the foundation of the Holocaust and was the basic tenet of Nazi Ideology. The mass murder of nearly two out of every three Jews was done using deadly living conditions, brutal mistreatment, mass shootings & gassings and specially designed killing centers.
The few instances from the movie are as mentioned below:-
– The servant named, Pavel was found to be a doctor who was then forced to work as a domestic helper. Also, the scenes of him being killed although heart-breaking were the evidence of the treatment the Jews get that time.
– The condition of Shmuel i.e., being denied food, clothing, housing, even jobs, separated from the family members, and shaved off hair. Their humanity was first questioned and then denied. Their freedom was stolen, crippled and starved. The question for them was – do they have the right to live?
The complex emotional issues of evil and the holocaust depicted in the movie raise the question about the nature of man and spark a great moral discussion. We all can find ourselves in the place of the child who loves to explore and have both the things in front of his eyes i.e., the thing which his parents, sister, teacher, and the leader of his country wants him to see and the thing which he himself explores. And the impact of the former was so strong that he was not able to believe the things which he himself has seen with his eyes. He was not able to trust himself or maybe he was not able to believe that all his loved ones are wrong. But while exploring which is true or reality, he himself was crushed in that mill. At last, he figured out the truth by experiencing it.
The boy committed treason of being innocent and believing his own self; his dream, interest or his passion to explore things was disloyal to the state. If we see the current situation, I found myself exactly in the same place as the boy who although have many sources of information but is stuck between whom to believe and whom to not? Like the point of view of a nine-year-old German boy, who only learned about the reality of his situation in bits and pieces.
The recent situations in India including the 2020 Delhi riots, 2022 Karauli riots, and bulldozing houses in MP & Delhi, make us stand in the same place as ‘there are always two sides to every story’ and understanding is a three-edged sword, your side, their side, and the truth in the middle. So, we must get all the facts before jumping to the conclusions and we have to explore on our own and can’t just rely.
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Written and directed by. Mark Herman. Mark Herman's "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" depends for its powerful impact on why, and when, it transfers the film's point of view. For almost all of the way, we see events through the eyes of a bright, plucky 8-year-old. Then we begin to look out through the eyes of his parents.
Our review: Parents say ( 62 ): Kids say ( 222 ): THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS, based on John Boyne's novel, is a quietly effective, tastefully crafted, and ultimately devastating portrait of the Holocaust as seen through one boy's eyes. Directed by Mark Herman ( Hope Springs, Little Voice ), The Boy in the Striped Pajamas pulls off a hard-to ...
Rated: 3/4 Mar 7, 2024 Full Review Keith Garlington Keith & the Movies "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" asks several powerful questions about war, family, and morality. It also gives us a ...
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: Directed by Mark Herman. With Asa Butterfield, Zac Mattoon O'Brien, Domonkos Németh, Henry Kingsmill. Through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a German concentration camp, a forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas may very well be 2008's most important family film. Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 4, 2020
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a powerful fictional story that offers a unique perspective on how prejudice, hatred and violence affect innocent people, particularly children, during wartime. Through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy largely shielded from the reality of World War II, we witness a forbidden friendship that forms between Bruno, the son of Nazi commandant, and Shmuel, a Jewish ...
2008 holocaust drama 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' from director Mark Herman and starring Asa Butterfield, is "devastating". Full review by Bethen Blackabee. Mark Herman's memorable 2008 holocaust drama 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' is a movie with a "hard-hitting and emotional narrative", "a deserved classic for future cinephiles".
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (released as The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in North America) is a 2008 Holocaust historical drama film written and directed by Mark Herman.It is based on the 2006 novel of the same name by John Boyne.Set in Nazi-occupied Poland, the film follows the son of a Schutzstaffel officer who befriends a Jewish prisoner of his age.
Movie Review | 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas' Horror Through a Child's Eyes. ... THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS. Opens on Friday in Manhattan. Written and directed by Mark Herman, based on the ...
When his family moves from their home in Berlin to a strange new house in Poland, young Bruno befriends Shmuel, a boy who lives on the other side of the fence where everyone seems to be wearing striped pajamas. Unaware of Shmuel's fate as a Jewish prisoner or the role his own Nazi father plays in his imprisonment, Bruno embarks on a dangerous ...
Viewers should know that the film's resolution, though admirably restrained and unsentimental, is devastatingly sad. Parents should take this into account. This beautifully rendered family film is told in a classic and old-fashioned style, in the best sense, providing poignant and powerful teachable moments. Read More.
The home life of the Nazi commandant of a World War II concentration camp appears bizarrely serene in Mark Herman's grave and powerful drama "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," but the ...
Movie Review. Ah, little boys. They're impish, curious, messy and daring. Most mothers of boys have at least a few gray hairs because of their sons' escapades. ... The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which is based on a book by John Boyne, also illustrates how powerful words and images are. Bruno, who likely represents thousands of his ...
6. Obviously there have been several powerful films that have dealt directly with the Holocaust. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is a unique look at this murderous and genocidal scar on world history. It's based on John Boyne's 2006 novel of the same name and looks at the subject through the eyes of an 8-year-old boy.
The movie might result in some difficult questions from children about the Holocaust, but they are conversations well worth having. "The Boy in the Striped. Pajamas". H*H 1/2. Rating: PG-13 ...
November 8, 2008. In " The Boy in the Striped Pajamas ," the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust are glimpsed through the eyes of a 9-year-old boy, and somehow this makes them seem even more ...
Article continues below this ad. Concentrating on the point of view of the 8-year-old boy, Bruno, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" has the structure and aura of a fable, but it aims for no ...
The Independent Critic offers movie reviews, interviews, film festival coverage, a short film archive and The Compassion Archive by award-winning activist and writer Richard Propes. ... It is several hours after I have attended a press screening for "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," the opening night film for the 2008 Heartland Film Festival in ...
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS opens with 8-year-old Bruno playing with his friends on the streets of Berlin while National Socialist Swastika flags wave in the breeze. When he gets home, his father, a Nazi officer, says he has just been promoted. He tells Bruno and his sister, Gretel, that they will be leaving their beautiful home in Berlin.
The movie not only depicts the tragic effects of prejudice, but it offers a poignant look at the evil that humans are capable of apart from Christ's redemption. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas reminds us of the atrocities that can happen when people fail to love each other as Christ commanded. Related Links: The Holocaust Through a Child's Eyes
March 31, 2023. age 13+. These 3 reviews come from 3 of my grade 8 and 9 students, B, N and D. 1. I rate the movie "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" a 4 out of 5. It was a completely unexpected ending since most main characters live in other movies. I was even kind of surprised by it.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a 2006 historical fiction novel by Irish novelist John Boyne. The plot concerns a German boy named Bruno whose father is the commandant of Auschwitz and Bruno's friendship with a Jewish detainee named Shmuel.. Boyne wrote the entire first draft in two and a half days, without sleeping much; but also said that he was quite a serious student of Holocaust-related ...
The movie "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" is based on the novel (historical fiction) by John Boyne. Set in World War II, the Holocaust drama relates the horror of a Nazi extermination camp through the eyes of a young boy. The movie revolves around an eight-year-old boy whose father has just been promoted to commandant of the German army.