The Boy In The Striped Pajamas Movie Review

Tag : pajamas

Written, directed and adapted by Mark Herman from the children'sbestseller by Irish novelist John Boyne, The Boy In The StripedPajamas is told through the eyes of Bruno (Asa Butterfield). He'sthe eight year old son of a Nazi commander (David Thewlis) who isuprooted from his Berlin home and relocated with his family to avilla in the countryside where Dad oversees a nearby concentrationcamp. While his father is sworn to secrecy about not revealing thenature of his job there, Mom (Vera Farmiga) is increasingly awareof the horrors surrounding them, but pretends not to notice.
Bruno, on the other hand is full of questions, and his immensecuriosity along with his loneliness, isolation and boredom leadshim to wander off on an adventure to locate the source of thatblack, horrid smelling smoke-filled sky. Not to mention hisperplexed notions about all those peculiar adults around him,including why the people over at what is described to him as afarm, wear pajamas all day, while a reviled Jew who toils as aservant in their home, says he's a doctor but would rather peelpotatoes.
And though forbidden to venture outside the home, Bruno sneaks offto the farm, where he discovers a ragged boy his own age namedShmuel (Jack Scanlon), who also wears those strange, identicalstriped pajamas. And certain that Shmuel must be having much morefun on the other side of that barbed wire fence than he, Brunofetches cakes smuggled from his kitchen for the famished lad, sothat he may have an alluring pair of those pajamas too. And perhapseven join Schmuel on the other side, where the grass must surely begreener.
The Boy In The Striped Pajamas is both a mystifying andheartbreaking Pied Piperesque tale. And a cautionary reminder to acareless adult world how their deeds impact most brutally andtragically on those vulnerable little souls they've committed tocaring most about, to nurture and shield from harm.
Miramax Films
Rated PG-13
3 1/2 stars
Prairie Miller is a multimedia journalist online, in print and onradio. Contact her through NewsBlaze.