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[[SS]] officer Ralf ([[David Thewlis]]) and his wife Elsa ([[Vera Farmiga]]) move from [[Berlin]] to the countryside with their [[children]], twelve-year-old Gretel ([[Amber Beattie]]) and eight-year-old Bruno ([[Asa Butterfield]]), after Ralf is promoted to [[commandant]] of a [[Nazi concentration camp]]. |
[[SS]] officer Ralf ([[David Thewlis]]) and his wife Elsa ([[Vera Farmiga]]) move from [[Berlin]] to the countryside with their [[children]], twelve-year-old Gretel ([[Amber Beattie]]) and eight-year-old Bruno ([[Asa Butterfield]]), after Ralf is promoted to [[commandant]] of a [[Nazi concentration camp]]. |
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Confined to the grounds of the family's new home, Bruno craves companionship and |
Confined to the grounds of the family's new home, Bruno craves companionship and exploration. He eventually escapes through the window of an outhouse, treks through the woods, and emerges at an isolated, unguarded corner of the concentration camp, which he initially believes is a farm. There, he befriends Shmuel ([[Jack Scanlon]]), a boy of the same age. Bruno returns frequently thereafter, bringing Shmuel food and playing games with him through the electrified [[barbed wire]] fence. Shmuel gradually informs Bruno that he and his family are imprisoned, forced to wear the "striped pajamas," because they are [[Jews]]. |
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Bruno and Gretel's [[tutor]], Herr Liszt ([[Jim Norton (actor)|Jim Norton]]), teaches them with [[antisemitism|antisemitic]] [[bigotry]] and [[nationalism|nationalist]] [[propaganda]] under the guise of history. In response, Gretel becomes increasingly [[fanaticism|fanatical]] in her support for the [[Third Reich]]. She covers her bedroom wall with propaganda [[poster]]s, and [[flirt]]s with Lieutenant Kurt Kotler ([[Rupert Friend]]) as her budding [[sexuality]] becomes fixated on the ideal of the [[German soldier]]. In contrast, Bruno is disinterested in history and skeptical of Liszt's teachings; the Jews Bruno knows, Shmuel and the family's kind, former doctor and servant, Pavel ([[David Hayman]]), do not resemble the tutor's antisemitic [[stereotype]]s. He also witnesses savage, senseless acts of Nazi brutality that conflict with the propaganda ideal of military [[heroism]]. One night, when Pavel accidentally overturns Kotler's [[wine glass]] at the table, Kotler drags Pavel out of the room, brutally kicking him with his [[jackboot]]s, presumably killing him. |
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One day, Bruno finds Shmuel cleaning glasses in the house and gives him cake. When Kotler sees crumbs on Shmuel's lips and accuses him of stealing, Shmuel tells the officer the truth: Bruno is his friend, and Bruno gave him the cake. Terrified, Bruno betrays Shmuel, saying that he has never seen the boy before and that Shmuel stole the cake. A remorseful Bruno finds Shmuel at the fence, his eye is badly beaten. Shmuel forgives Bruno, and the boys shake hands through the fence. |
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From a comment of Kotler's regarding the [[crematoriums]], Elsa learns that Ralf presides over an [[extermination camp]], not a [[labor camp]] as she has been led to believe, the couple argue repeatedly about Ralf's role at the camp and the children's proximity to it. Eventually, they decide that Elsa will take the children to their Aunt Lotte's in Heidelberg. But the day before Bruno is due to leave, Shmuel reveals that his father has gone missing in the camp. The following morning, Bruno digs a hole beneath the barbed wire, changes into the camp clothing that Shmuel had gotten for him, and crawls under the fence to help Shmuel find his father. Inside, Bruno is horrified by the dehumanization, [[starvation]], and sickness; the camp is the very antithesis of the [[Theresienstadt (film)|Theresienstadt]]-esque propaganda film that had shaped his prior impressions. |
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As the boys search fruitlessly for Shmuel's father, they become herded with other prisoners toward the [[gas chambers]] where everyone is instructed to undress for a "shower." A soldier wearing a [[gas mask]] pours [[Zyklon B]] granules into the chamber. Bruno and Shmuel grasp each other's hands tightly as the lights go out. |
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Back at the house, Elsa |
Back at the house, Elsa alarms Ralf that Bruno is missing. Using tracking dogs, Ralf and other soldiers follow the boy's trail through the woods. When they discover his discarded clothing, and see the hole dug beneath the fence, Ralf races inside the camp, searching desperately for his son. Seeing the gas chamber doors closed and those behind it silenced, Ralf realizes what has happened and cries out in anguished grief. Hearing him, Elsa and Gretel fall to their knees sobbing over Bruno's clothes. The family is left to face the [[tragic irony]] that Bruno has become a victim of the Nazi death camp run by his own father. The film ends with a shot of the men's abandoned "pajamas". |
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==Cast== |
==Cast== |
Revision as of 07:49, 14 February 2010
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas | |
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Directed by | Mark Herman |
Written by | Screenplay: Mark Herman Novel: John Boyne |
Produced by | David Heyman |
Starring | Asa Butterfield Vera Farmiga David Thewlis Jack Scanlon David Hayman Rupert Friend |
Cinematography | Benoît Delhomme |
Edited by | Michael Ellis |
Music by | James Horner |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Miramax Films |
Release dates | United Kingdom: September 12, 2008 Israel: October 30, 2008 United States: November 7, 2008 |
Running time | 94 minutes |
Countries | Template:FilmUK Template:FilmUS |
Language | English |
Budget | $12.5 million |
Box office | $40,034,748 |
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in the United States) is a Template:Fy British tragedy film based on the novel of the same name by Irish writer John Boyne.[1] Directed by Mark Herman and produced by David Heyman, it stars Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewlis, and Vera Farmiga.
A Holocaust drama, the film explores the horror of a World War II extermination camp through the eyes of two eight-year-old boys, one the son of the camp's Nazi commandant, the other a Jewish inmate, whose friendship ends in tragedy.
Plot
SS officer Ralf (David Thewlis) and his wife Elsa (Vera Farmiga) move from Berlin to the countryside with their children, twelve-year-old Gretel (Amber Beattie) and eight-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield), after Ralf is promoted to commandant of a Nazi concentration camp.
Confined to the grounds of the family's new home, Bruno craves companionship and exploration. He eventually escapes through the window of an outhouse, treks through the woods, and emerges at an isolated, unguarded corner of the concentration camp, which he initially believes is a farm. There, he befriends Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a boy of the same age. Bruno returns frequently thereafter, bringing Shmuel food and playing games with him through the electrified barbed wire fence. Shmuel gradually informs Bruno that he and his family are imprisoned, forced to wear the "striped pajamas," because they are Jews.
Bruno and Gretel's tutor, Herr Liszt (Jim Norton), teaches them with antisemitic bigotry and nationalist propaganda under the guise of history. In response, Gretel becomes increasingly fanatical in her support for the Third Reich. She covers her bedroom wall with propaganda posters, and flirts with Lieutenant Kurt Kotler (Rupert Friend) as her budding sexuality becomes fixated on the ideal of the German soldier. In contrast, Bruno is disinterested in history and skeptical of Liszt's teachings; the Jews Bruno knows, Shmuel and the family's kind, former doctor and servant, Pavel (David Hayman), do not resemble the tutor's antisemitic stereotypes. He also witnesses savage, senseless acts of Nazi brutality that conflict with the propaganda ideal of military heroism. One night, when Pavel accidentally overturns Kotler's wine glass at the table, Kotler drags Pavel out of the room, brutally kicking him with his jackboots, presumably killing him.
One day, Bruno finds Shmuel cleaning glasses in the house and gives him cake. When Kotler sees crumbs on Shmuel's lips and accuses him of stealing, Shmuel tells the officer the truth: Bruno is his friend, and Bruno gave him the cake. Terrified, Bruno betrays Shmuel, saying that he has never seen the boy before and that Shmuel stole the cake. A remorseful Bruno finds Shmuel at the fence, his eye is badly beaten. Shmuel forgives Bruno, and the boys shake hands through the fence.
From a comment of Kotler's regarding the crematoriums, Elsa learns that Ralf presides over an extermination camp, not a labor camp as she has been led to believe, the couple argue repeatedly about Ralf's role at the camp and the children's proximity to it. Eventually, they decide that Elsa will take the children to their Aunt Lotte's in Heidelberg. But the day before Bruno is due to leave, Shmuel reveals that his father has gone missing in the camp. The following morning, Bruno digs a hole beneath the barbed wire, changes into the camp clothing that Shmuel had gotten for him, and crawls under the fence to help Shmuel find his father. Inside, Bruno is horrified by the dehumanization, starvation, and sickness; the camp is the very antithesis of the Theresienstadt-esque propaganda film that had shaped his prior impressions.
As the boys search fruitlessly for Shmuel's father, they become herded with other prisoners toward the gas chambers where everyone is instructed to undress for a "shower." A soldier wearing a gas mask pours Zyklon B granules into the chamber. Bruno and Shmuel grasp each other's hands tightly as the lights go out.
Back at the house, Elsa alarms Ralf that Bruno is missing. Using tracking dogs, Ralf and other soldiers follow the boy's trail through the woods. When they discover his discarded clothing, and see the hole dug beneath the fence, Ralf races inside the camp, searching desperately for his son. Seeing the gas chamber doors closed and those behind it silenced, Ralf realizes what has happened and cries out in anguished grief. Hearing him, Elsa and Gretel fall to their knees sobbing over Bruno's clothes. The family is left to face the tragic irony that Bruno has become a victim of the Nazi death camp run by his own father. The film ends with a shot of the men's abandoned "pajamas".
Cast
- Asa Butterfield as Bruno
- Vera Farmiga as Elsa (Mother)
- David Thewlis as Ralf (Father)
- Jack Scanlon as Shmuel
- David Hayman as Pavel
- Rupert Friend as Kurt Kotler
- Jim Norton as Herr Liszt
- Amber Beattie as Gretel
- Sheila Hancock and Richard Johnson as Grandma and Grandpa
- Cara Horgan as Maria (Maid)
Production
The film was shot in Budapest, Hungary.
Regarding shooting the final scene, "that was just a nightmare on so many levels," says Herman. "You've probably got more lawyers there than filmmakers. You had all the legalities of kids in amongst grown-up naked people."[2]
Soundtrack
The original score for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was composed by James Horner. It has been released exclusively at iTunes and Amazon.com as a download only. The track listing is as follows:
- "Boys Playing Airplanes" – 4:13
- "Exploring the Forest" – 2:36
- "The Train Ride to a New Home" – 3:34
- "The Winds Gently Blow Through the Garden" – 5:57
- "An Odd Discovery Beyond the Trees" – 2:51
- "Dolls Aren't for Big Girls, Propaganda is..." – 3:43
- "Black Smoke" – 1:43
- "Evening Supper – A Family Slowly Crumbles" – 7:53
- "The Funeral" – 1:54
- "The Boys' Plans, From Night to Day" – 2:36
- "Strange New Clothes" – 9:53
- "Remembrance, Remembrance" – 5:31
Reception
The film was broadly welcomed by the popular press in both the USA and Europe. For example, James Christopher in The Times referred to it as "a hugely affecting film. Important, too".[3] However, it also had many detractors, including Manohla Dargis of The New York Times who summed it up as "the Holocaust trivialized, glossed over, kitsched up, commercially exploited and hijacked for a tragedy about a Nazi family".[4]
Elsewhere, even the very premise of the book and subsequent film—that there would be a child of Shmuel's age in the camp—is, according to critics, an unacceptable fabrication that does not reflect the reality of life in the camps. Reviewing the original book, Rabbi Benjamin Blech writes: "Note to the reader: There were no eight-year-old Jewish boys in Auschwitz - the Nazis immediately gassed those not old enough to work."[5] John Boyne is actually closer to the truth on this point. According to statistics from the Labour Assignment Office, Auschwitz-Birkenau contained 619 living male children from one month to fourteen years old on August 30, 1944. On January 14, 1945, 773 male children were registered as living at the camp. "The oldest children were fifteen, and fifty-two were less than eight years of age." "Some children were employed as camp messengers and were treated as a kind of curiosity, while every day an enormous number of children of all ages were killed in the gas chambers."[6] Such alleged falsification of history has important consequences, say critics, for the way that the victims of the Holocaust might be remembered and commemorated, and the Holocaust itself historicised, thus reviving arguments that were previously aired about Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List and the manner in which that film too was seen to sanitise and falsify aspects of life in the concentration camp.[7]
Craig Detweiler published a study guide to the film, which asks viewers to answer some of the same hard ethical questions raised by rabbinical critic Benjamin Blech.[8]
- British Independent Film Award:
- Best Actress - Vera Farmiga
- Chicago International Film Festival
- Audience Choice Award - Mark Herman
- British Independent Film Award:
- Best Director - Mark Herman
- Most Promising Newcomer - Asa Butterfield
- Premio Goya:
- Best European Film
References
- ^ Vilkomerson, Sara (March 31, 2009). "On Demand This Week: Lost Boys". The New York Observer. Archived from the original on August 30, 2009. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
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(help) - ^ Applebaum, Stephen (September 11, 2008). "Disney's 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' - The stuff of nightmares". The Scotsman. Archived from the original on August 30, 2009. Retrieved August 30, 2009.
{{cite web}}
: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=
(help) - ^ Christopher, James (September 11, 2008). "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Review". The Times. Archived from the original on August 30, 2009. Retrieved August 30, 2009.
{{cite web}}
: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=
(help) - ^ Dargis, Manohla (November 7, 2008). "Horror Through a Child's Eyes". The New York Times. Retrieved August 30, 2009.
{{cite web}}
: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=
(help) - ^ Blech, Benjamin (October 23, 2008). "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas". Aish.com. Archived from the original on August 30, 2009. Retrieved August 30, 2009.
- ^ People in Auschwitz, by Hermann Langbein, translated by Harry Zohn, Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, c.2004. ISBN 0807828165; A lucky child : a memoir of surviving Auschwitz as a young boy, by Thomas Buergenthal, London : Profile, 2009. ISBN 1846681782.
- ^ Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler's List, edited by Y. Loshitzky, Indiana University Press, 1997
- ^ Detweiler, Craig. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas – A Study Guide". WingClips.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 30, 2009. Retrieved August 30, 2009.