The Boy in the Striped Pajamas/Pyjamas

[Carol]

Carol earlier:
> > Has anyone in the UK seen the new David Thewlis film, "The Boy in
the Striped Pyjamas" ("Pajamas" in the U.S.)? <snip> 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." 
 
> Potioncat:
> Oh dear. oh dear. oh dear. oh dear. 
> 
> Michael is reading that book now and said he thought the dad was a 
Nazi. I'd better start reading it too. This isn't going to be pretty.
He gets very emotional about this subject. (I think one 14-year-old
and one 55-year-old are going to find it disturbing.)

Carol again:
Let me know, offlist or on, how he reacts.

Potioncat: 
> On to the movie.
> 
> OK, now all I can picture is Ralph,(but we call him Rafe) 

Carol:
LOL. If anyone doesn't follow the allusion, go to OT Chatter.

Potioncat:
Fiennes as the commandant in Schindler's List. I'm trying to put
Lupin's face in a Nazi uniform, but it won't fit.

Carol:
Did you watch the trailer at http://www.thefilmfactory.co.uk/boy/ ?
I know that your monitor was acting up, but you can at least *hear*
Lupin, I mean Thewlis, in the part. I think he's very well cast, and
very believable. the official site (link in the earlier post) has
still photos, too, but, of course, if your monitor is acting up, you
can't see them. Anyway, shave off Lupin's mustache, put him in a Nazi
uniform, make him an apparently kindly father who believes in what
he's doing (but gets angry when his wife challenges him) and you've
got Thewlis in this role.
> 
> Potioncat:
> Hmm. I'll have to think about this. I wonder if I should tell my son
that Thewlis plays the dad in a movie version---before he reads the
book or after. He's going to be very interested in that.

Carol:
You decided to let him finish the book first, right? I hope the movie
doesn't ruin Lupin for him, assuming that he sees it. 
> 
Carol earlier:
> > 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.
> 
> Potioncat:
> Are all the characters German, and are all the actors British? Did 
the movie makers decide not to "do" German accents at all? I've seen
movies done that way before. It works if it's consistent.

Carol:
Right. And once you understand that the characters are German even
though they sound British, the accents somehow seem appropriate or you
just forget about them and accept them, more so, I think than we would
if they were played by American actors. I think it was the right
decision. The casting is perfect, even down to the innocence of the
little boy who plays Bruno and knew nothing about the Holocaust before
he made the film. I can't imagine boys with real German accents doing
a better job (they'd have been harder to understand, too), much less
these children faking German accents.

> Potioncat, who notices she's dropping words in most of her posts
lately and asks kindly will readers pick them up they find any.

Carol, who hasn't spotted any dropped words, but will send any missing
"was's" or "the's" by e-mail if she catches them 
>