As I left the theater, I found myself incapable of controlling my emotions.  

Director Mark Herman’s “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is a rough movie to watch: not rough in the sense that it shows graphic scenes or builds a vivid attachment to a suffering character, but rough in that it stirs up emotions that have been built up over the years

“Pajamas” is based on John Boyne’s bestselling novel of the same title.   The story follows young eight-year old Bruno (Asa Butterfield) in the middle of World War II.   Bruno lives comfortably in Berlin, but soon he moves with his parents into the countryside.   See, his father (David Thewlis) is a Nazi official and has just been promoted to a very important position that requires him to relocate to a region away from major civilization.

“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”

Their new industrial home is surrounded by high walls and guarded by Nazi soldiers who frequent the house for meetings with Bruno’s father.   Bruno is horribly bored, separated from much of society (a tutor comes to teach him and his sister, so no school either).   Out of his bedroom window, he notices a large farm about a mile away from the house and asks his mom (Vera Farminga) why all the strange farmers are wearing striped pajamas.   She skirts over the question, which of course provokes him to find out for himself.   He sneaks out of his house and runs to the farm to find that there’s an eight-year old boy in striped pajama, named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), behind the electric fence. The two become friends and visit as often as they can.   Bruno doesn’t understand exactly what’s going on and why this farm exists.   Shmuel knows it’s not a farm, but he really doesn’t understand anything either, besides the fact that he is there because he’s a Jew.  

The majority of the film is told purely from Bruno’s perspective.   We see the parents and their friends only acting as they would in front of a young child, and only get the boy’s view of the world.   This is why the film is so painful, as the audience is aware of the horror while the film keeps hiding it.  

Herman really does a beautiful job of keeping the story grounded in Bruno’s perspective, which brings about such interesting questions: What did the Nazis who worked at the concentration camps tell their children and family?   Bruno’s father says that the only thing Bruno has to know about his work is that he is doing it for the good of the country and to provide a better life for Bruno in the future.   This story humanizes those under the Nazi regime, especially Bruno’s mother, who shows a passive disapproval of what is going on.  

The film sticks to this very innocent point-of -view until the very end.   This is where the film distinguishes itself from being akin to a made-for-TV movie.   For the majority of the story, the film is lighthearted and simplistic.   The director changes, though, towards the end and switches the perspective from young Bruno to about young Bruno.   All of a sudden, we are thrown into an omniscient point-of-view, no longer protected by the eyes and mind of a young child.  

The reality of the Holocaust hits home.   How could human beings possibly do this to one another?   How can someone’s life be completely out of his or her own control and be subjected to such cruelty?   How easily could this have happened to me?   You don’t ask these questions until the very end of the movie, since you really have no reason to until the security blanket is taken away.   Everything we know about the Holocaust: the atrocious, despicable, inhuman events of which no words can capture the ugliness, rush to the front of your mind all at once without preparing you for it.  

Some noteworthy things are that the film is completely in English, with actors using British accents.   I found this bothersome for the first hour of the film, but it’s not nearly as distracting as having fake German accents speaking English words, like in “Schindler’s List.”   Still, I wish they chose an all-German cast and just had subtitles.   But it doesn’t matter, because after an hour, you let go of this distraction and are encapsulated by the story.  

It’s a very simple film that attacks the Holocaust very differently from any other film. Not everyone who left the theater was affected to the same degree as me.   Such is the beauty of film though: it’s personal.