As though it were a nostalgic look back at an ideal WWII-era German childhood, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas is filmed in lush, warm colors and told through the eyes of an eight year-old German boy named Bruno (Asa Butterfield). Knowing we’re watching a Holocaust tale, this choice promises to be one of contrast where — at any moment now – the horrors of the concentration camp Bruno can see from his bedroom window will juxtapose dramatically with Bruno’s idyllic existence. But it never happens. Not really, anyway. Not in the way it should, and this proves to be a fatal flaw.
Eighty-minutes of film are used to set up the last ten and the risk inherent in such a thing doesn’t pay off. The idea is to devastate with a story turn and have us hold our collective breath and hang on for dear life as the unspeakable unfolds. But the moment is too rushed and melodramatic (could’ve done without the thunder) to feel in any way other than manipulative. Had it worked, and I believe it could have, the film might have had the chance to rise above the level of a television special – but that’s all it really is: A long Twilight Zone episode. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad film, just a healthy heaping of nothing special.
Bruno, his older sister Greta (Amber Beattie), and mother (Vera Farmiga) are forced to leave their beautiful Berlin home after Bruno’s father (David Thewlis) is promoted to commandent of a concentration/extermination camp. Assuming he’s an honorable soldier, no one, including Mother, is aware of what Father (“Mother” and “Father” is the only way each are identified) does for the Fatherland and so, blissfully ignorant, everyone goes on with the normal goings-on involved in a family move. Bedrooms are chosen, rooms are tastefully decorated, a tutor is hired, and Bruno, lonely for friends and intensely curious, begins to explore his new surroundings.
Though he’s warned off going anywhere near “the farm,” after a while Bruno can no longer fight the pull of the forbidden and finds himself on the barb-wired edge of a work camp where a young Jewish boy, Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) in oversized “pajamas,” sits hiding behind a pile of building materials. Oblivious to very idea of evil in the world, Bruno assumes it’s some kind of farm commune and strikes up a friendship he’s so lonely for.
One of the more interesting ideas the film fumbles badly is the family’s — specifically Mother’s — awakening to who and what Father really is. A slip of the tongue from a young SS officer reveals all and just where things could get interesting, they turn unexceptionally rote. Mother screams, “You’re a monster,” and stops wearing make up as she mopes about, resulting in the terrible unimaginative abuse of an excellent idea – how one deals with the sudden knowledge that the person they love and trust most is in fact an abomination.
An early, too-small subplot promises much. Father’s mother (called only “Grandma” and played by Sheila Hancock with Golden Age verve) knows what her son is and no amount of drink and bitter asides can cover the dread in knowing she’s bred a disease. Later, during a family dinner scene, her absence carries more weight than anyone present.
The performances are hit and miss. The two young boys are especially good, especially young Scanlon as a broken child dealing with the sudden madness of his life with a hazy innocence. Both share that child actor naturalness too few manage to hang on to. As Mother, Farmiga, who has a lovely screen presence, unfortunately makes every obvious performance choice you’d expect. No doubt, the script made a few of those choices for her but she never once surprises. As Father, Thewlis seems born to play a Nazi and surprises even less. The most emotionally effective moments come courtesy of David Hayman as a Jewish slave working in the house. As each scene passes we see a man with a little more life drained from him. He is so obviously doomed, though, that it hurts the credibility of Mother’s surprise at what’s really going on.
Honestly, I kept waiting for the movie to get better, more visceral, more dramatic and harrowing, but the story is all-in on those final minutes and that proves to be a mistake. Not a single moment lingers once you exit the theatre. The experience vanishes almost immediately.
One can appreciate an attempt to tell a Holocaust story from a unique point of view, but regardless of that choice, when you make a film about the Holocaust there are certain responsibilities involved both in the world of the moral and the dramatic. The Boy In The Striped Pajamas fails on both fronts. Not horribly, not in a way that’s an insult to history, but through a planned and executed mediocrity.
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