The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008) Movie

I watched this movie on DVD. The solemnity and tragedy in this movie totally extinguished the joy and merriment from the earlier two movies which I watched before this one. Before the movie, I had been grinning at the TV and even rolling around the couch laughing at some scenes. After this movie, I trudged off to bed with heavy feet.

The Slog Reviews: 10/10. A good summary of the plot can be found here. However, as well-written as it is, it cannot capture the superb acting (especially by the young child actors) and the emotions that this powerful show invokes. The director captures the deviousness and the innocence of a child (the lead, Bruno), the simplicity and generosity of a child's heart (Bruno lets down Shmuel, the Jewish child prisoner, and despite a brutal beating, Shmuel forgives Bruno unconditionally and immediately upon Bruno's apology) and the complexity, tragedy and cruelty of the holocaust (doctors become potato peelers, watchmakers mend boots, jews are gassed like animals, all made to strip and packed together standing in a small crammed chamber). Some scenes are particularly painful to watch, like watching Pavel, the kindly old jew prisoner (once a doctor) being beaten (to death presumably for he never appears again and the maid is seen scrubbing the floor where he was beaten) because he split some red wine during the dinner, Shmuel playing checkers with Bruno through a barbed fence by directing Bruno where to move the pieces, Shmuel with a wheel-barrow and striped pyjamas with a serial number stitched on starving for food while Bruno of the same age is a child of privilege because his father is herr kommander of the extermination camp. Bruno is taught by his tutor that Jews are evil and the cause of the German people's suffering but the kindness and gentleness he experiences from Pavel and what he learns from Shmuel cannot be reconciled with what he is taught. This difference is all the more apparent when he watches his parents quarrel (his mother does not agree with the Reich) and sees the way his father right-hand man abuses Pavel. The ending was totally unexpected, I had expected Shmuel to die of course and Bruno be left pondering and mourning his absence but instead, both Shmuel and Bruno die, accidental victims of Bruno's father's death camp.