Dir. Mark Herman, UK/US, 2008, 95 mins Cast: Vera Farmiga, David Thewlis, Asa Butterfield Review by Carol Allen This film turns on the irony of the fact that we know with hindsight about the horrors of the Nazi death camps, whereas the eight year old hero of this story knows nothing of them and interprets what he sees through his child's view of the world. Bruno (Butterfield) is uprooted from his life and his friends in wartime Berlin, when his Nazi officer father (Thewlis) is promoted and they move to a desolate part of the country. Father's new job is as commandant of one of the death camps devoted to the extermination of its Jewish prisoners. Bruno of course knows nothing of this and Mother (Farmiga) believes that her husband is overseeing a labour camp. Bored by having no one of his own age to play with, Bruno becomes fascinated by the "farm" he can see from his bedroom window, where everyone bafflingly wears striped pyjamas. One day he creeps out through the forbidden back garden and finds the farm, where on the other side of the barbed wire he sees and befriends Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a boy of his own age. We're about at third of the way into the film before the two boys meet but the ground is beautifully and subtly laid, giving us a sense of insight into the life and attitudes of a privileged Nazi family of the time. Father is not a monster but in Thewlis's performance a devoted family man, who really believes in the evil of what he is doing for the Fatherland, which makes it all the more chilling when he describes the Jewish race as "not human. Evil, dangerous vermin". Farmiga is very moving as Mother, a charming and pretty woman, protective of her children, who goes to pieces when she discovers the true purpose of the camp. There's an interesting performance from Rupert Friend as Father's scarily cold young lieutenant aide Kotler, an apparently devoted Nazi, who has his own secret. Amber Beattie is Bruno's older sister Gretl, who develops a teenage crush on Kotler and starts to paper the walls of her room with Nazi propaganda, there are all too short cameos from Sheila Hancock as Bruno's Grandma, outspoken in her disapproval of the regime, Richard Johnson as Grandpa, a supporter of the Führer and David Hayman as the family's Jewish kitchen slave, a former doctor, who befriends Bruno. It is the children though whose innocent viewpoint dominates the film, as they attempt to interpret the baffling evils of the adult world. Shmuel with his huge eyes and shaven head and the ever curious and aware Bruno, puzzled by his friend's constant hunger and, once he realises that the camp is a prison, the answer to his question; "What have you done?" "I am a Jew." Writer/director Herman has done a magnificent job in adapting John Boyne's best selling novel to the screen. It is beautifully written and performed, totally compelling and at times almost unbearably moving. The climax of the film rams home in its last terrible irony the fact that both Bruno and Shmuel are more alike than different Like all of us they are members of the same race, the human race. It 's a fact which shouldn't be news to anyone but the ease with which it can still be ignored and violated makes it both necessary and relevant to repeat yet again.
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