Mark Herman's new film, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,"" is not for the faint of heart. Set in WWII Germany, this film confronts the horror of the Holocaust in a story aimed at young adults. Unlike its predecessor, ""Schindler's List"" - whose story unfolded through the eyes of German businessman Oskar Schindler - ""The Boy in the Striped Pajamas"" shows us the world through the innocent eyes of a child who is completely naive about the war and who mistakes the concentration camps for farms where everyone gets to wear pajamas all day.
The story begins in Berlin, where the protagonist, an 8-year-old German boy named Bruno (Asa Butterfield), learns that his father (David Thewlis) has received a promotion in the military, forcing the family to move to the countryside. The new house is like a fortress, confining Bruno to his yard with no one to play with. Here, Bruno discovers he can see a ""farm"" from his bedroom window where there are kids. He asks his mother (Vera Farmiga) if he is allowed to play with the ""farm children,"" but she forbids it.
Eventually, Bruno sneaks out and discovers an 8-year-old Jewish boy, Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), opposite the ""farm's"" electrified wire fence. Bruno makes friends with the boy, visiting him every day and laughing at Shmuel's weird behavior - like how Shmuel always asks for food and then devours it whole. Bruno is eventually thrown into conflict when he learns Shmuel is supposed to be his enemy.
The audience is rarely taken out of Bruno's naive view, which makes the images of concentration camps and Nazi soldiers dragging people away all the more unsettling. Watching Bruno and his friends playing airplane and running past a wagon full of Jews headed off to concentration camps will create a lump in your stomach that only gets bigger as the movie continues.
Although the focus of the film is on children, the audience still gets to see how the adults in the film respond to their situation. Bruno's father becomes militaristic and cold as he runs the concentration camp and how German solders became so infatuated with the idea of doing a great service to their country that they ignored the horrors they were inflicting.
The film's most relatable adult is Bruno's mother. The audience watches her journey from excited, proud wife to a woman who cannot even look at her husband when she discovers his real war job. The audience easily empathizes with her sense of outrage.
""The Boy in the Striped Pajamas"" is incredibly hard to watch, but maybe that's the point. The innocent way Bruno sees these horrible events makes the events disturbing, yes, yet it creates a false security blanket; you go so long without seeing any violence that you almost forget about the real horrors happening within those camps. This security blanket protects the audience but backfires, helping the film's finale build up its pulverizing power.
It's hard to imagine a Holocaust movie designed for older children, but this movie does a good job of gently approaching its tough subject while still showing its horrors. Suggestion for all moviegoers: bring tissues.
Grade: A
