The Boy in the Striped Pajamas/Pyjamas

Carol justcarol67 at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 19 20:29:54 UTC 2008


Has anyone in the UK seen the new David Thewlis film, "The Boy in the
Striped Pyjamas" ("Pajamas" in the U.S.)? The U.K. release date was
September 12, but the U.S. release date isn't till November 14, right
around the time when we would have seen HBP. However, David Thewlis in
this film is no Lupin: He's the commandant at Auschwitz whose
eight-year-old son befriends a Jewish boy on the "farm" where all the
workers (some of them children) wear "striped pajamas." It looks like
a beautiful but ultimately tragic film that operates on two levels,
introducing older children very gradually to the horrors of the
Holocaust and pulling in older viewers who sense impending tragedy but
are nevertheless compelled to empathize with the child protagonists.
The film is rated 12A in England and PG13 in the U.S., but I have a
feeling that even thirteen-year-olds will find it very disturbing.
It's based on a book with the same title by John Boyne. 

Here's a link to the trailer (HD, downloads instantly with broadband):

http://www.thefilmfactory.co.uk/boy/

The synopsis on the official site,
http://www.boyinthestripedpajamas.com/ is very detailed and all but
reveals the ending (which the trailer doesn't hint at but which we,
knowing what Auschwitz was, can partially guess without having seen
even the trailer). I suggest not reading it all the way through unless
you can't stand not knowing what to prepare for.

Fans of Remus Lupin may find it disturbing to see David Thewlis as a
Nazi officer, believed by his son to be a "good man," "not the kind of
soldier who takes away people's clothes." (Obviously, he's much
worse.) Still, though, it looks like a good film, and children at some
point need to learn about the Holocaust, but I wonder how a
ten-year-old, even a mature one, would react to this particular story.

BTW, and this is a very minor point, the German characters speak with
their natural British accents, possibly indicating their social class
to those familiar with the accents. It took me a moment to realize
that the main character, Bruno, was not an English schoolboy from the
1940s. I thought at first that he was one of the children who had to
evacuate London during the Blitz. But once I realized that he was
German and his father a Nazi officer, I made a quick mental
adjustment. I recognized "Lupin" from his voice rather than his face,
but I quickly made that adjustment, too. (Potioncat, was it you who
had trouble accepting thewlis as Lupin because you'd first seen him as
a bad guy? Maybe you shouldn't see this film!)

Carol, who's definitely planning to see Ralph Fiennes in "The Duchess"
and tentatively planning to see David Thewlis in the "Striped Pajamas"
film





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