Film Review: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas unsettled me.

Was it because I compared it too closely -and it didn't come close - to Life is Beautiful (made by the same studio, Miramax), an infinitely, painfully superior take on a young boy who does not quite understand the horrors of the holocaust happening around him?

Was it because I can't stand when characters who live in different countries - Germany, circa WWII, for example - should be speaking in a foreign language, but for some reason are speaking English, and even more inappropriately in this case of a Nazi German family, in a British accent.

Perhaps I was annoyed that that the adult actors were intriguing (particularly Vera Farmiga - fantastic in everything - and the Nanny, who should have had a larger role), and I wished the annoying kids would piss off out of the movie and let the grown ups take the spotlight.

It disturbed me that, unlike my favourite films about the Holocaust - Schindlers List, The Pianist, Life is Beautiful above all - this movie seemed to cheapen the tactics that those films used so effectively and touchingly. I agreed with the New York Times reviewer wrote: this film shows "the Holocaust trivialized, glossed over, kitsched up, commercially exploited and hijacked for a tragedy about a Nazi family."

It bothered me that some of the characters were so stereotypical (the mean guard, the nice servant, the prissy daughter). It bothered me that the guard showed a moment of humanity at the dinner table that was never fully explored. It bothered me that Roberto Benigni was nowhere to be found, nor were any Hitler-style moustaches. It bothered me that not one word of German was spoken throughout the movie, yet they read German-language books.

But it was the end of the film that disturbed me the most. And only as the scene faded to black did I realize that this was the whole point of the movie. I was disturbed by the fate that befell the innocent boy Bruno, but then I realized that every person in that room was innocent. In fact, the boy was probably the most guilty of all, by association with his father. Then I felt that he got what he deserved. Then I heard the wailing in the distance, just as the father did, of his mother, the beautiful Vera Farmiga, who didn't deserve to lose her little boy. And I watched that heavy door, wishing it would open, hoping it really was just a shower.

And just like that, this film that had so unsettled me, had turned me into a naive kid, like the boy in Life is Beautiful, and like the boys in the striped pyjamas, who understood on some level what had happened, but who didn't want to believe it.

Rating: 6 out of 10.