Art, whether film or literature, can translate such faraway events as genocide into exquisitely simple and relateable terms that force viewers to try to comprehend the incomprehensible.
What better way to attempt comprehension than through the eyes of a child, whose natural innocence makes him the perfect interrogator - someone who asks questions whose simplicity belies their profundity. Director Mark Herman's adaptation of John Boyne's bestselling novel of the same name will no doubt move audiences with its portrayal of a forbidden friendship across barbed wire, but just barely misses the mark.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas follows a small but concentrated cast of characters. It centers on Bruno, a young German boy with high socks and knobby knees, who comes to understand the Holocaust in a very unusual way.
Like the viewer, Bruno (Asa Butterfield), is a blank canvas. He is just an eight-year-old who prefers playing cops and robbers in his family's comfortable Berlin manor to following his father, who is assigned to an important mission in service of the Fatherland. His father, Ralph, played admirably by David Thewlis (Professor Lupin in the Harry Potter movies), is a high-ranking Nazi commandant who was relocated to a forced labor camp in the German countryside to supervise the internees.
It is only a matter of time before Bruno's explorations exhaust his new home and turn toward the surrounding compound, discovering the ugly secret hidden behind it.
Like any parent dealing with an inquisitive child, the first line of defense is hiding the truth. Ralph does this well, using all the severity of a Nazi father to distance himself from his children. It is described in terms of being a very important service to the Third Reich.
From a window in his bedroom, though, Bruno satisfies his curiosity by watching the work camp. One morning, he discovers the sight of the internees laboring within the camp and begs the question: "Why do the farmers wear pajamas?" This question leads Bruno to the camp, where he strikes up a friendship with the young Shmuel (newcomer Jack Scanlon). As his friendship with Shmuel deepens, so do Bruno's questions about what is happenng around him.
The film runs into difficulties with the abrupt death of one its most likable characters (who is, unfortunately, given the least screen time). The significance of the death is unclear, and the viewer feels as though the director left in an artificial tear-jerking plot mistake of the book that should have stayed on the cutting room floor. Similarly, the film's climax bears the same unnaturalness in plot construction. It is all plausible, but the viewer gets the feeling that things are a little rushed, as if the story, being about genocide, has doomed itself to only one kind of possible ending, which the plot quickly writes itself into in the final minutes.
Also problematic is Elsa's unlikely transformation from complicit Nazi wife to compassionate bleeding heart. She truly begins to shy away from her husband's ideas when she discovers that the labor camp doubles as an execution field. She finds the idea of slavery more palatable than murder. The movie is supposed to center around the friendship of Shmuel and Bruno, but the viewer finds this pairing repetitive and superficial. And, though Bruno's simple innocence is an important tool for the plot, he comes across as too simple at times, lacking the appropriate depth that the film calls for.
Yet, where decisions like these call the film's quality into question, other scenes are an entirely gripping balance of sensitivity and horror. The dinner scene featuring the hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked Lt. Kottler's explosion of misplaced anger is a testament to talented acting and an instance of excellent screenplay.
Many directors, memorably Steven Spielberg with Schindler's List and Roberto Benigni with Life Is Beautiful, succeed in walking the line between compassion and gratuity to produce remarkable depictions of the Holocaust. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas succeeds in adapting a moving story, but the end product is just shy of its potential. Perhaps lacking the adequate ambition to do justice to its subject and its lineage.
