Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

This film remake of a fable by John Boyne is all about dealing with difficult and painful circumstances, but the problem is, the movie itself is a difficult and painful experience. This is horror through a child’s eye, at its most awful.
Bruno (played by Asa Butterfield) is the son of a Nazi officer. He moves with his family from a protected, charmed life in Berlin, to a new environment. Here, the lonely soul makes friends with a Jewish boy. They meet regularly and become quite close—but they can only meet from across a fence.
The year is 1942 or 1943. The eight-year-old boy Bruno is unaware that the ‘farm’ spread out before him is a concentration camp that is run by his father. Shmuel, who is Jewish, and Bruno are roughly the same age. They come up with an outrageous plot to free Shmuel, and that has a devastating end.
The film does not help the watcher better grapple with history. It only illuminates the darkest hour in history through the eyes of these children, who are doubtlessly innocent. The ending also negates the one positive that may have come of the film—Bruno’s mother’s terrible angst at what she sees around her.
Not only does the movie not help you, or the characters, find solace or redemption, it over-stretches the point that this was a bad time, a bad year, and a bad decade. Boy in the Striped Pyjamas pulls at the right strings all along but then spectacularly fails to deliver.