The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas directed by Mark Herman

Art, whether film or literature, can translate such faraway events as genocide into exquisitely simple and relatable terms, forcing the viewer 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, asking 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 Pajamas 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 (played by Asa Butterfield) is a blank canvas. He is a boy just any other eight year-old who desires to stay behind with his friends to play cops and robbers in his family’s comfortable Berlin manor than to follow his father who is assigned to an important mission in service of the Fatherland. His father Ralph, played admirably by David Thewlis better known for his role as Professor Lupin in the Harry Potter movies, is a high ranking Nazi commandant relocated to a forced labor camp in the German countryside to supervise the internees.

The new country house is a bleak structure, built with the same military precision responsible for the efficient camp which is placed at a distance behind it. Bruno hates the new living arrangements, or rather misses his old friends in Berlin, spending each day exploring his new quarters. It is understood that there is only a matter of time before Bruno’s explorations exhaust the house and turn toward the surrounding compound, discovering the ugly secret hidden behind it. The compound’s situation with relation to the camp is at a hypocritical distance, the Nazis being unable to constantly view the emblem of what they so ardently desire. There is, however, one window within the house from which the camp is visible and it is ironically situated in Bruno’s room. One morning, he discovers it and the sight of the internees laboring within the camp begs the question: “Why do the farmers wear pajamas?”

Like any parent dealing with an inquisitive child, the first line of defense is hiding the truth. Ralph does this well, using the all the severity of a Nazi father to distance himself coldly from his children, looking after their well-being but remaining vague with regard the true nature of his work. It is merely described in terms of being a very important service to the Third Reich, as the Nazi tutor employed to indoctrinate Bruno and his sister Gretel (Amber Beattie) would say.

Bruno’s deceptively innocent question embodies the plot’s central theme of comprehending genocide. It is so simple that Bruno’s mother, Elsa, played with a mixture of annoying cluelessness and then later righteous disgust by the talented Vera Farmiga (better known for her role in The Departed), has difficulty figuring out her son’s logic until he points it out to her. Bruno’s explorations finally take him to the camp where he strikes up a friendship with the young Shmuel, played by newcomer Jack Scanlon.

As his friendship with Shmuel deepens, so does Bruno’s questions about what is going on, why exactly Jews are bad. Along with Shmuel, the actions of Pavel, the house servant and former physician who fixes his scrapes when his mother is absent, force Bruno to rethink the lessons of his tutor. Can there be such a thing as a good Jew?

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 been destined for 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. That she finds the idea of slavery more than palatable than murder is doubtful. 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 to 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 displaced 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 Pajamas 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.

images: johnboyne.wordpress.com

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