Review – The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas
July 22nd 2009 07:16
RELEASE DATE : 23 April 09
RUNNING TIME: 94 mins
CAST:
Asa Butterfield – Bruno
Zac Mattoon O’Brien – Leon
Vera Farmiga – Mother
David Thewlis – Father
Domonkos Nemeth – Martin
Henry Kingsmill – Karl
Amber Beattie – Gretl
Jack Scanlon – Shmuel.
DIRECTOR: Mark Herman
WRITING CREDITS: Mark Herman (novel by John Boyne)
DISTRIBUTOR: MIRAMAX
SYNOPSIS: A story of innocence lost and humanity found.Set during World War II, this is the story of a young German boy who befriends a Jewish boy locked away in a concentration camp awaiting a fate unknown. After sneaking away from the villa just a few short miles from the camp, Bruno soon becomes friends with the interned Shmuel and brings him food on a regular basis. Their friendship is tested but manages to stay firm eventually leading to startling and unexpected consequences. After Bruno finds out his family will be moving back to Berlin, the two hatch a plan to stay together.
Bruno - The boy in the striped pyjamas
REVIEW: Thinly veiled Aushwitz concentration camp seems to be too sanitised considering what we know of the atrocities committed there, but this is a movie and we should suspend belief a little. Unfortunately, there are two many anomalies here to ignore and after a while, they become extremely annoying. Secondly, Concentration Camp soldiers never took their families along for the trip. The circumstances would be much too difficult on the wives and children.
One thing you notice immediately at the beginning of the film is the very strong British accents especially the class of accent to depict the master/servant status. Director Mark Herman would have been better of attempting to use neutral accents for such subject matter and this continues to grate throughout the film.
Character development throughout the film has too many holes in it. At the beginning you see the family heading into this new adventure with their eyes wide open, the parents especially, then suddenly you see the naivety of the mother halfway through the film when she finds out what is really happening at the camp. Could she really have been so blind to the events unfolding before her. Surely she must have some idea, but she continues to show her ingenuousness, not only to her husbands position, but also to the fact that Bruno is stealing food and continues to disappear from the villa for extended periods.
Jack Scanlon – Shmuel
Why didn’t the guards notice this young boy sneaking out the back of the villa? Every German seems to be shown as either cruel and malicious, stupid or a combination of all three. They can’t even discover a young Jewish boy sneaking off to hide behind the wood pile each day. Shmuel seems to have been in the camp for an extended period of time. A young boy of his age would undoubtedly have been sent to the furnaces quite early in his time there. He also seems to be the only child in the camp. Very strange.
Gretl, Bruno’s sister seems to grow up rather quickly in the film and then pretty much disappears. At the beginning of the film she is playing with dolls, then she suddenly has a crush on her father’s driver, the ‘mean and vicious’ Nazi, she is extremely quickly converted to the Nazi ideals by her elderly teacher after just a few brief sessions and throws her dolls in the cellar instead places posters of Hitler and Nazi ideals all over her walls. Where did this all come from? She seemed such a nice young girl a few days earlier.
The point trying to be expressed here is that the script seems rushed and unfinished. The actors at times look like they are at times struggling with their lines especially the leads. The boys friendship seems real enough, one of the better attributes of eth film, but once again everything seems to be rushing toward the inevitable end.
Everything fits too convienently into place. The Lieutenant failing to inform his superiors about his father and subsequent posting to the front. The grandmother against the Nazi ideals and she is the one who doesn’t survive the Berlin bombings is a little too clichéd. Even the over exaggerated fear of the servants seems laboured.
This film only screens for an hour and a half. Perhaps a little more time could have been spent fleshing the characters and developing the plot. Trying to cram so much information into such a short period always meant major plot holes and inconsistencies and the director fails to create any real tension in the lead up to the finale
What could have been a beautiful tragedy somehow manages to miss its mark.
RANKING 5/10
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SimonC
