C-Directed by Mark Herman Starring Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, Vera Farmiga, and David Thewlis Review by Jon Kissel |  |
Having watched the decidedly unsentimental Holocaust film Son of Saul a week previously, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a stark antidote. A young boy drives the plot in Son of Saul, but in that case, it's a boy immediately gassed upon his arrival at Auschwitz, barely survives, and then is coldly smothered by the 'doctor' on staff who refers to the child as 'it.' Mark Herman's film, adapted from the book of the same name, makes his protagonist a child, but a child of the Nazi elite, the son of a death camp commandant. This is an odd choice, not unlike telling an offensive joke. If one is going to go out on that limb, the joke better be funny. Herman takes a big risk in telling this story from the side of the oppressors, a fatally flawed premise that could be redeemed if the story is worth it. Alas, this viewer could never get over the setting, though it's not like the premise's redemption is in the film in the first place.
Herman starts relatively strong, with young Bruno (Asa Butterfield) running through the streets of wartime, Nazi-controlled Berlin with his pals, playing war in their short pants and suspenders. They think nothing of the Jewish ghetto being liquidated as they run past it, and there's no ominous break in the score either. This is the life that Bruno has gotten used to in his 7 or 8 years, where war is a constant, albeit distant, state, and people get crammed into trucks and taken away somewhere. His father, Ralf (David Thewlis), a high-ranking SS officer, is being reassigned to the countryside, and the family, which includes mother Elsa (Vera Farmiga) and older sister Gretel (Amber Beattie), packs up their spacious home for an isolated rural estate. Bored and lonely within the estate's gated confines, Bruno becomes more inquisitive, asking why the gardener is wearing pyjamas, and if he can go play on the neighboring 'farm.'
Eventually, Bruno's efforts pay off, and he finds a gap in the perimeter. While exploring, he comes upon a barb wire fence, and a scrawny boy playing in the dirt behind it. The skittish kid, who reluctantly introduces himself as Schmuel (Jack Scanlon), just listens to Bruno ramble on until the horn blows and he quickly runs away back to the barracks. As Bruno continues to surreptitiously meet with Schmuel, his family is fracturing. While Elsa seems to be aware of the Final Solution, being so close to it, and sleeping next to a man responsible for it, is wracking her conscience, and she retreats inward, morally on Bruno's side though his play-dates remain a secret. Gretel is taking after her father, absorbing her new tutor's fascist lessons, parroting Nazi propaganda and hate-mongering. The apple of Ralf's eye, she puts away the childish things of her youth and covers her room in Hitler posters and iconography.
I don't necessarily think that the gradual moral awakening of the son of an SS officer is an impossible premise, but The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas cuts a lot of accuracy corners. Verisimilitude is owed to this time period, and I had too many doubts about the mechanics to ever give myself over to the plot. For instance, would Schmuel really be able to sneak away for a few hours to an open part of the camp? Would a child who spent any time in a death camp be able to retain any innocence, at all, as Schmuel does? Wouldn't the child of an SS officer have certain things drilled into him from a very early age? Would the wife of said officer cut him off when he's about to say that Jews aren't really people? Would that wife be so disgusted when her daughter becomes more evangelical about Nazism? Herman doesn't get the usual allowances given to historical films, because this is about something so singularly important. The softening of certain characters and the implausible positions they find themselves in feels disrespectful.
What saves The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas from disaster is the well-observed behavior of Bruno and the performances. Give Herman, who hasn't worked since this film's release, a coming-of-age story and I believe he'd knock that out of the park. The opening revelry is impressive in its naturalism and in the discordant note it hits, as merry children dance past swastikas. Bruno's irrepressibility is combined with a free-range kid's natural curiosity, both ably communicated by Butterfield in a solid child performance. Little touches, like Bruno being unable to hold two schemes in his head at the same time, keep the viewer entertained, if not invested. Both parents are well portrayed by Thewlis and Farmiga, with the reliable Farmiga especially strong in her growing concern. They share a wordless scene in a cemetery that doesn't make sense for their relationship, but is still a powerful representation of the private warring with the public. That it's all in service to this particular film and its misguided purpose is a shame.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas just doesn't work. It skirts the inherent cruelty of the setting until the last, possible, most manipulative moment, a moment so over-the-top, it may as well be parody. Herman takes a big swing in trying to make this movie, from this perspective, but there are too many punches pulled and not enough sociological realism. The film posits something like childlike innocence as a corrective to brutality and injustice, opening as it does with a quote about youth as a sensual wonderland until the dark hour of reason. It's sticks in my craw that anyone would try and apply that flawed sentiment to the Holocaust. If that's your theme, maybe apply it to the side of right, or make a better, more grey film about the side of evil. I'm just not interested in watching the son of an SS officer frolic through the woods, especially when the story has as little to offer as this one does. C-
Eventually, Bruno's efforts pay off, and he finds a gap in the perimeter. While exploring, he comes upon a barb wire fence, and a scrawny boy playing in the dirt behind it. The skittish kid, who reluctantly introduces himself as Schmuel (Jack Scanlon), just listens to Bruno ramble on until the horn blows and he quickly runs away back to the barracks. As Bruno continues to surreptitiously meet with Schmuel, his family is fracturing. While Elsa seems to be aware of the Final Solution, being so close to it, and sleeping next to a man responsible for it, is wracking her conscience, and she retreats inward, morally on Bruno's side though his play-dates remain a secret. Gretel is taking after her father, absorbing her new tutor's fascist lessons, parroting Nazi propaganda and hate-mongering. The apple of Ralf's eye, she puts away the childish things of her youth and covers her room in Hitler posters and iconography.
I don't necessarily think that the gradual moral awakening of the son of an SS officer is an impossible premise, but The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas cuts a lot of accuracy corners. Verisimilitude is owed to this time period, and I had too many doubts about the mechanics to ever give myself over to the plot. For instance, would Schmuel really be able to sneak away for a few hours to an open part of the camp? Would a child who spent any time in a death camp be able to retain any innocence, at all, as Schmuel does? Wouldn't the child of an SS officer have certain things drilled into him from a very early age? Would the wife of said officer cut him off when he's about to say that Jews aren't really people? Would that wife be so disgusted when her daughter becomes more evangelical about Nazism? Herman doesn't get the usual allowances given to historical films, because this is about something so singularly important. The softening of certain characters and the implausible positions they find themselves in feels disrespectful.
What saves The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas from disaster is the well-observed behavior of Bruno and the performances. Give Herman, who hasn't worked since this film's release, a coming-of-age story and I believe he'd knock that out of the park. The opening revelry is impressive in its naturalism and in the discordant note it hits, as merry children dance past swastikas. Bruno's irrepressibility is combined with a free-range kid's natural curiosity, both ably communicated by Butterfield in a solid child performance. Little touches, like Bruno being unable to hold two schemes in his head at the same time, keep the viewer entertained, if not invested. Both parents are well portrayed by Thewlis and Farmiga, with the reliable Farmiga especially strong in her growing concern. They share a wordless scene in a cemetery that doesn't make sense for their relationship, but is still a powerful representation of the private warring with the public. That it's all in service to this particular film and its misguided purpose is a shame.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas just doesn't work. It skirts the inherent cruelty of the setting until the last, possible, most manipulative moment, a moment so over-the-top, it may as well be parody. Herman takes a big swing in trying to make this movie, from this perspective, but there are too many punches pulled and not enough sociological realism. The film posits something like childlike innocence as a corrective to brutality and injustice, opening as it does with a quote about youth as a sensual wonderland until the dark hour of reason. It's sticks in my craw that anyone would try and apply that flawed sentiment to the Holocaust. If that's your theme, maybe apply it to the side of right, or make a better, more grey film about the side of evil. I'm just not interested in watching the son of an SS officer frolic through the woods, especially when the story has as little to offer as this one does. C-
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