The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: Affecting Piece of Cinema

Movie- The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Cast- Asa Butterfield, Zac Mattoon O’Brien, Vera Farmiga

Director- Mark Herman

Rating- * * * *

Inspired by a 2006 Novel by Irish Novelist John Boyne, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is undoubtedly a magical piece of cinema which certainly didn’t receive the recognition it deserved. The great success of the film is its simplicity, it does not seek to over analyze but simply allows the development of the characters to narrate the story. Persistent emotion and unbearable tragedy certainly establishes the movie to be one of the best in the recent years.

Bruno is the 8 yr old son of Nazi officer, and the curious eyes and ears of Mark Herman’s gripping story. He liked nothing more than going to school or playing with friends, but when his father is promoted from a desk job in Berlin to commanding a death camp in the middle of nowhere, Bruno finds it hard to accustom in the new place or understand why he is forbidden to visit the strange farm with electrical fences. In boredom and confusion he wonders why people are always dressed in striped Pyjamas. A few days later, Bruno befriends another youth, strangely dressed in striped pyjamas, named Shmuel who lives on the other side of the electric fence. Bruno will soon find out the reason for the forbiddance, and that the neighboring yard is actually a prison camp for Jews awaiting extermination.

The cast is terrific and the secret friendship between Bruno and the amiable starving Jewish boy Shmuel has the rhythm of a children’s adventure, spiked by unspeakable adult truths. The two boys exchange tokens, play draughts and struggle to understand the prejudices and propaganda that separates them is unimaginably innocent.

David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga are wonderfully icy as the overprotective parents whose lies about the death camp are as hollow as their marriage. The movie engages with the complexity of the Holocaust in a language that can move children as profoundly as adults. The characters are very well connected and weaved together; absence of any one charatcer would have made the film incomplete.

Written and directed by Mark Herman, ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ is not your usual take on holocaust but a stunning and movie piece of cinema brought to us through the eyes of an eight year old boy. In short, the film captures how the innocence of a young boy is sabotaged by the evil of holocaust. Herman hasn’t had an acclaimed hit to his name before TBISP, but what he’s accomplished with this film is simply incomparable with any of his films.

The movie evidences that when youthful minds are still being shaped, they can be poisoned by the evil of the adults they admire. Much of the film depends on our ability to suspend disbelief and see the world as Bruno sees it. It has a finale designed to shock and the inevitability of the loss of innocence and tragedy is a heavy burden for the audience to bear. Herman has tried to put a blunt message across proving that love is the only thing that binds us all irrespective of what we are or which part of the world we belong or the color of our skin. This one is definitely for those who don’t mind shedding tears once in a while.

In essence; ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ is one of the best films on holocaust since ‘Schindler’s List’.