The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas isn’t really wearing PJ’s. He’s Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) an eight year old in a World War 2 concentration camp uniform who we don’t meet until well into this movie based on John Boyne’s bestselling novel. Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is the films true protagonist. His father (a very un-Harry Potter-like David Thewlisis) is an SS officer enjoying the perks that go along with a military promotion. Unfortunately for his family the new job means moving from Berlin to the countryside where their new mansion backs onto the work camp that he’s been put in charge of. His mother (Vera Farmiga) has a vague idea of life in the camp but the children don’t although Brunos older sister Gretel (Amber Beattie) is catching on fast – maybe just a little too fast. Although Bruno is forbidden from venturing past the back of the house his pre teen boredom and incorrigible curiosity take him to the barbed wire edge of papa’s workplace where he encounters Shmuel who becomes his only friend in the rural seclusion. His exposure to the house slave leaves him to draw conclusions that are diametrically opposed to the indoctrination lessons that his sister takes to heart from his history tutor. When his mother literally gets wind of the truth about the final solution being conducted at the camp she tears the family away from her husband but the twist that separates this from being another mien kampf mea culpa is the karma inadvertently visited upon the father by the boy in the striped pajamas.