Schindler's List for children? (The Boy In Striped Pyjamas (DVD))

Member Name: SWSt

Product:	The Boy In Striped Pyjamas (DVD)
Date:	18/10/08 (226 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Powerful ending, promising storyline

Disadvantages: Lacks emotional impact, too slow-paced, wasted characters sanitised view of the Holocaust

It's a brave man who takes on a Holocaust film after the powerful and moving Schindler's List set the standard so high. It's an even braver man who tries to tell the tale from the point of view of a child - and the child of a Nazi at that.

Yet this is precisely what The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas sets out to do. It focuses on young Bruno, a seven year old, whose father is sent to run a concentration camp for Jews during World War II. Gradually, Bruno comes to befriend a young Jewish boy stuck on the other side of the camp wires.

The film has the potential to be a very powerful film - e a child's version of Spielberg's classic. It could be a profound tale of innocence lost and broken childhood, crushed by the ideals of the system which perpetuates the myth that "Jews are evil". At the same time, it could have become a slushy, over-sentimental mess, full of idealised views and forced sentiment. Regrettably, although there is much promise and some powerful elements, mindful of its need to be family-friendly, it veers slightly too much towards the latter.

What the film does well is slowly and gradually establish the character of Bruno as a typical, energetic seven year old, bored by his current surroundings and keen to make new friends in the strange place his parents have brought him to. You can sense his frustration and young child actor Asa Butterfield does an excellent job of conveying both this and the innocence of his young character. We see the world through his eyes, and it helps to create a suitable atmosphere in which the tale can be told.

What it does less well is concentrate too much on this innocence. The film never builds on this promising start: it never suddenly has the innocence collapse as the real world impacts on Bruno's child-like world-vision. Bruno never really seems to comprehend what is happening on the other side of the fence, and this is a serious weakness. It means that (ending aside) there is no real emotional impact of the film.

This emotional void is furthered by the relationship between Bruno and the titular Boy. Whereas Schindler's List chose to tell the tale of a group of Krakow Jews and their Nazi captors, Boy focuses in on an individual relationship. This should engage our sympathies and emotions even further, making the film a very personal experience, yet it never quite does so. The burgeoning relationship is never given the screen time it needs, seen only in small snippets. As such, it fails to convince as a genuine friendship and comes across as a little sterile and artificial - something devised as a basic plot mechanism.

Part of the blame for this must lie with scriptwriter/director Mark Herman, who concentrates far too much on Bruno as the sole character and spends too little time on either his erstwhile captive friend or the relationship between them. We never see things from Schmuel's point of view and this seriously impacts on the effect he can have as a real and sympathetic character. Herman rather lazily relies on too many close-up shots of Bruno looking astounded/frightened/concerned/upset, using these shots to try and convey the emotions he thinks the audience should be feeling, rather than making the audience genuinely experience them through the eyes of the two boys.

The film is also a highly sanitised. Whilst this is understandable (it's a film which wants to educate a younger generation about the Holocaust), it again has a serious impact on the film. End section aside, there is no real sense of the horrors or dangers of the Concentration Camp - like Bruno, we are carefully shielded from the worst of these. There are occasional glimpses (the fatal beating of Jewish prisoner etc.), but none of the shocking, violent, random executions that characterized both the real camps and Schindler's List. Schmuel seems able to dodge his work almost at leisure and the camp guards are conspicuous only by their absence. As such, you could almost be forgiven for thinking that life in the camps wasn't too bad for the inmates - they were required to work hard for little food, but were essentially secure. Far from teaching a new generation about the horrors of the concentration camps, the film is seriously in danger of suggesting that the excesses have been over-exaggerated. There is no sense of danger, no sense that Schmuel could disappear at any time, no sense of death hanging over the friendship.

Bruno aside, the rest of the cast have little to do and are let down by a weak script. The excellent David Thewlis is completely wasted as Bruno's father as the camp commander,whilst Vera Farmiga is underused as Bruno's mother. The same is true of his sister. Again, this is a wasted opportunity to show the tensions between different family members. In a better script, for example, Thewlis could have been a tortured figure - torn between loyalty to his family and his Party. Similarly, there was much potential drama to be mined from the conflict between the naivety of young Bruno and the burgeoning idealism of his sister, prospering under the propaganda-inspired teaching of a new tutor, yet this goes completely unexplored. The fact is that, like the random violence and horrors of the camp, the potentially explosive family dynamics are seriously underplayed in the quest to create a child-friendly Holocaust film.

The film does have a strong ending, which finally brings some emotional impact, although it's not without its weaknesses. It is hugely predictable and from at least the half way point of the film, you are likely to know where it is heading. In fairness though, this doesn't undermine its impact or power... although once again, these are turned into child-friendly events, so the horrors witnessed are never fully played out on screen.

The ending does have a tendency to be rather melodramatic. played out against the backdrop of a sudden, unexpected storm, it features lots of running about and shouting, torrential rain and a rather heavy score which tells the audience that something BAD is about to happen. The ending is also rather rushed. After the long languid build-up (around 80 minutes of shots of Bruno looking bored), the denouement is wrapped up in less than ten minutes, leaving insufficient time to absorb the emotional gut punch fully. Again, this perhaps points to the inexperience of the director and in a safer pair of hands, the ending would have been more subtle, and so much more powerful.

One final niggle... if most of the main characters are meant to be either German or East European, why do all of them cut-glass "BBC Announcer" upper class accents? It gives the film a very strange feel and constantly undermines the idea that this is a film told from the perspective of a Nazi film.

The Boy in Striped Pyjamas never fully delivers on its promising set-up, due to a combination of a weak script, emotionally sterile setting and confused direction. It clearly wants to be a Holocaust film for children... yet many children will find it too slow and boring. On the other hand, adults will find its rather sanitised, safe and artificial view of concentration camps deeply uncomfortable and difficult to stomach. This is a film which needed to be far braver in its approach to have the impact and importance it clearly thinks it should have. A brave attempt to tell the story from the point of view of a child, but ultimately, a mediocre effort.

Basic Information
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The Boy in Striped Pyjamas
2008
Director: Mark Herman
Running time: approx. 93 minutes
Certificate : 12A

© Copyright SWSt 2008

Summary: A brave, but not wholly successful attempt to tell the horrors of the Holocaust to children