The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

 

Adapted from John Boyne’s bestselling novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a fictional story that offers a unique and powerful perspective on how prejudice, hatred and violence affect innocent people during wartime. The subject matter is incredibly bleak and the final act of Mark Herman's well-crafted film sets in motion a chain of events that must, inevitably, culminate in tragedy.

However, Herman's script glimpses moments of beauty and hope through the eyes of its young, idealistic hero, who will become a footnote in one of the darkest chapters in European history. Horrors are implied but never given any explicit screen time.

The film is told from the perspective of an eight-year-old German boy shielded from the reality of World War II. Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is the middle-class son of a Nazi commandant who gets an unexpected promotion, in a place called Auschwitz. We witness the emergence of an unlikely friendship that forms between Bruno and Schmuel (Jack Scanlon), a Jewish boy who cannot leave his ‘home’. Though a barbed-wire fence physically separates the two, their friendship grows and their lives become inescapably and tragically entwined.

This is an enlightening, sobering and informative work for all generations of filmgoers. There are plausibility issues – no German accents; no guards noticing the youngsters’ frequent chats – but Herman builds a tightening sense of dread that finds no release in the final denouement.

Director: Mark Herman
Starring: Cara Horgan, Jack Scanlon, Asa Butterfield, Sheila Hancock, David Heyman
Certificate: 12A
Runtime: 90 minutes (approx.)
Release date: 9 March 2009
RRP: £17.99

Adrian McBreen