Der Junge im gestreiften Pyjama (2008)
48KDer Junge im gestreiften Pyjama: Directed by Mark Herman. With Asa Butterfield, Zac Mattoon O’Brien, Domonkos Németh, Henry Kingsmill. Through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a German concentration camp, a forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.
“When my son (nearly 12 years old) read the book he was awake until 5am that night thinking about the story and what it all meant; he had some penetrating questions too. A day or so later he said that he thought that it would make a good film, and imagine his delight when he saw that there was a film of the book.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI have taken him to see the film; and was riveted. I think that the style of the film is really that of an old fashioned family film, however the subject matter is emotionally very demanding and all the better for that. It does what good drama should do – makes you think and feel. As the credits ran, at the showing that I saw, no one moved or spoke for a minute or two. The Holocaust is a difficult subject, but to tell a story in such a way that it is accessible to a 12 year is a great achievement.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThere have been some comments that the cast speak English (rather than, presumably, German) and that this is somehow a bad thing. What are the alternatives? Either sub-titles or daft u0026#39;ello u0026#39;ello accents. In some ways the ordinariness of the Nazis and the family points up the horror of what happened that ordinary people can do the worst of things to fellow human beings.”
