The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas_(film)

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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas



Theatrical release poster

Directed by Mark Herman

Produced by David Heyman

Screenplay by Mark Herman

Based on The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by

John Boyne

Starring Asa Butterfield

Jack Scanlon

David Thewlis

Vera Farmiga

Rupert Friend



Music by James Horner

Cinematography Benoît Delhomme

Editing by Michael Ellis

Studio BBC Films

Heyday Films

Distributed by Miramax Films

Release date(s) September 12, 2008 (2008-09-12) (United Kingdom)

November 7, 2008 (2008-11-07) (United States)









Running time 93 minutes

Country United Kingdom

United States

Hungary

Language English

Budget $12.5 million

Box office $40,416,563



The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, released in the United States as The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,[1][2] is a 2008 historical-drama film based on the novel of the same name by Irish writer John Boyne.[3] Directed by Mark Herman and produced by David Heyman, it stars Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga and Rupert Friend.



A Holocaust drama, the film explores the horror of a World War II extermination camp through the eyes of two 8-year-old boys; one the son of the camp's Nazi commandant, the other a Jewish inmate.



Contents [hide]

1 Plot

2 Cast

3 Soundtrack

4 Reception

4.1 Accolades

5 References

6 External links





[edit] Plot

SS officer Ralf (David Thewlis) and his wife Elsa (Vera Farmiga) move from Berlin to the countryside with their children—twelve-year-old Gretel (Amber Beattie) and 8-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield)—after Ralf is promoted to commandant of a Nazi concentration camp, implied to be Auschwitz. Bruno is confined to the front grounds of their new home and craves companionship and adventure. He disobeys his parents by sneaking out and trekking through the woods to an isolated, unguarded corner of the camp, which he initially believes to be a farm.



He befriends Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a boy his own age. They meet in the same spot every day. Bruno starts bringing Shmuel food and playing games with him through the barbed wire fence. Shmuel gradually reveals to Bruno the truth of what is behind the fence, telling him that he and his family have been imprisoned and forced to wear the "striped pyjamas" because they are Jews. On hearing this, Bruno remembers what he has been taught about Jewish people and makes an excuse to leave but soon realises that Shmuel is not evil at all and returns as normal the next day.



Bruno and Gretel soon get a tutor, Herr Liszt (Jim Norton), who pushes an agenda of antisemitism and nationalist propaganda. Gretel becomes increasingly fanatical in her support for the Third Reich, covering her bedroom wall with Nazi propaganda posters and throwing away her dolls, much to the confusion of Bruno. She flirts with SS Lieutenant Kurt Kotler (Rupert Friend), her father's subordinate, as her budding sexuality becomes fixated on the ideal of the German soldier. However, she still remains good-natured and protective of her brother. Bruno remains sceptical of Nazi Propaganda, because all of the Jews Bruno knows, including the family's servant Pavel (David Hayman), do not resemble Liszt's teachings. She is eventually the one to explain that the camp isn't a farm.



One day Kurt Kotler and Elsa are stood in the front yard when smoke from corpses being burned floats up from the camp, causing Kotler to remark that "they smell even worse when they burn". Ralf had been sworn to secrecy about the camp's true aims and hadn't told Elsa what was happening. After follows a blazing row between Elsa and Ralph at the end of which it is insinuated Elsa reveals who told her about the camp's secret.



In the next scene Ralph interrogates Kotler about his Father's (Kotler's, that is) loyalty to the Nazis. This puts Kotler in a bad mood and when Pavel accidentally knocks over his glass while trying to trying to fill it up he drags him into another room and the sounds of the servant being beaten to death are heard. The following morning the family' maid is shown scrubbing bloodstains off the floor and Elsa appears white faced with red eyes as though she has been crying.



Later on in the film Shmuel is sent to the commandant's house to polish glasses, there he meets Bruno entering the kitchen, Bruno is quick to hand few slices of cake to Shmuel, suddenly bursting out of the kitchen door Kotler arrives. The Lieutenant notices the crumbs of cake smothered over the boy's face, he immediately questions Shmuel, Shmuel responds by stating that he and Bruno have been friends and Bruno was the one to hand over the slices of cake. Bruno in fear of Kotler, immediately denies all accusation made against him. The next time Bruno sees Shmuel he has a black eye and it is insinuated Kotler beat him.



The rowing between Elsa and Ralph continues. Gradually, Ralph is convinced that the house is no place for a child to grow up and makes arrangements for Elsa and the children to return to Berlin while he remains to manage the camp.



The day before Bruno is due to leave, Shmuel reveals that his father has gone missing in the camp. It is implied that he was taken into a gas chamber, as Shmuel says his father went away with some men but did not come back. Seeing an ideal opportunity to redeem himself for wronging Shmuel previously, Bruno digs a hole beneath the fence, changes into prison clothing that Shmuel has stolen for him, and enters the camp to help Shmuel find his father. Bruno is horrified by what he sees: the dehumanization, starvation and sickness are the antithesis of the Theresienstadt-esque propaganda film that had shaped his prior impressions. While searching for Shmuel's father in their hut a group of officers appear and take everyone inside to the gas chambers.



At the house, Bruno's absence is noticed and Elsa bursts into Ralf's meeting, telling him that Bruno is missing. After Gretel and Elsa discover the open window Bruno went through and the remains of food Bruno was taking for Shmuel underneath it, Ralf and his guards mount a search through the woods to find him. They enter the camp searching for Bruno, while his wife and daughter follow close behind. In the gas chambers, the inmates—including Bruno and Shmuel—are told to remove their clothes, amid speculation that it is only for a shower. They are packed into the gas chambers, where Bruno and Shmuel take each others' hands. A soldier pours some Zyklon B pellets into the chamber. The prisoners start yelling and banging on the metal door. Ralf, still with his guards, arrive at an empty dormitory, signalling to him that a gassing is taking place. Ralf cries out his son's name and Elsa and Gretel fall to their knees, Elsa screams and sobs with sorrow while clutching Bruno's abandoned clothing. The movie ends by showing the closed door of the now silent gas chamber, and then slowly fades to black before the credits begin.



[edit] CastAsa Butterfield as Bruno

Jack Scanlon as Shmuel

Vera Farmiga as Elsa (Mother)

David Thewlis as Ralf (Father)

David Hayman as Pavel

Rupert Friend as Lieutenant Kurt Kotler

Jim Norton as Herr Liszt

Amber Beattie as Gretel

Sheila Hancock as Grandma

Richard Johnson as Grandpa

Cara Horgan as Maria

[edit] SoundtrackThe score for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was composed by James Horner. It has been released exclusively at iTunes and Amazon.com as a download only. The track listing is as follows:



1."Boys Playing Airplanes" – 4:13

2."Exploring the Forest" – 2:36

3."The Train Ride to a New Home" – 3:34

4."The Winds Gently Blow Through the Garden" – 5:57

5."An Odd Discovery Beyond the Trees" – 2:51

6."Dolls Aren't for Big Girls, Propaganda is..." – 3:43

7."Black Smoke" – 1:43

8."Evening Supper – A Family Slowly Crumbles" – 7:53

9."The Funeral" – 1:54

10."The Boys' Plans, From Night to Day" – 2:36

11."Strange New Clothes" – 9:53

12."Remembrance, Remembrance" – 5:31

[edit] ReceptionThe film has a 64% with a 6.2/10 average rating on Rotten Tomatoes. James Christopher in The Times referred to it as "a hugely affecting film. Important, too".[4] Conversely, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times summed it up as "the Holocaust trivialized, glossed over, kitsched up, commercially exploited and hijacked for a tragedy about a Nazi family".[1]



Some critics have called the very premise of the book and subsequent film—that there would be a child of Shmuel's age in the camp—an unacceptable fabrication. Reviewing the original book, Rabbi Benjamin Blech wrote: "Note to the reader: There were no nine-year-old Jewish boys in Auschwitz—the Nazis immediately gassed those not old enough to work."[5] But, according to statistics from the Labour Assignment Office, Auschwitz-Birkenau contained 619 living male children from one month to fourteen years old on August 30, 1944. On January 14, 1945, 773 male children were registered as living at the camp. "The oldest children were sixteen, and fifty-two were less than eight years of age." "Some children were employed as camp messengers and were treated as a kind of curiosity, while every day an enormous number of children of all ages were killed in the gas chambers."[6][7] However Roger Ebert proposes that the film is not even attempting to be a forensic reconstruction of Germany during the war, but "about a value system that survives like a virus." [2]



[edit] Accolades This section does not cite any references or sources. (September 2011)



British Independent Film Award:

Best Actress - Vera Farmiga

Chicago International Film Festival

Audience Choice Award - Mark Herman

British Independent Film Award:

Best Director - Mark Herman

Most Promising Newcomer - Asa Butterfield

Premio Goya:

Best European Film

[edit] References1.^ a b Dargis, Manohla (November 7, 2008). "Horror Through a Child's Eyes". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/movies/07paja.html. Retrieved August 30, 2009.

2.^ a b "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081105/REVIEWS/811059987. Retrieved 2011-09-01.

3.^ Vilkomerson, Sara (March 31, 2009). "On Demand This Week: Lost Boys". The New York Observer. http://www.observer.com/2009/movies/demand-week-lost-boys. Retrieved July 4, 2011.

4.^ Christopher, James (September 11, 2008). "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Review". The Times. Archived from the original on August 30, 2009. http://www.webcitation.org/5jPTlEC8V. Retrieved August 30, 2009.

5.^ Blech, Benjamin (October 23, 2008). "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas". Aish.com. Archived from the original on August 30, 2009. http://www.webcitation.org/5jPUPVz28. Retrieved August 30, 2009.

6.^ Hermann Langbein People in Auschwitz, translated by Harry Zohn, Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, c.2004. ISBN 0-8078-2816-5

7.^ Thomas Buergenthal A lucky child : a memoir of surviving Auschwitz as a young boy. London : Profile, 2009. ISBN 1-84668-178-2.

[edit] External linksThe Boy in the Striped Pajamas at the Internet Movie Database

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas at Box Office Mojo

Production notes
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/movies/07paja.html
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081105/REVIEWS/811059987
Evil is so easily performed and too easily ignored -Note the comments of R. Benjamin Blech in this regard. We can become that desensitized and numbed by the presence of an all encompassing evil. One cannot claim innocence in the face of overwhelming evil,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lucky_Child
Read the book Lucky Child  by Thomas Buergenthal
http://www.webcitation.org/5jPUPVz28
R Blech's article. Where did the Nazi's purchase the Zyklon B gas used to exterminate millions ?  I will document the answer to this query in a later post!!
This well-meaning book ends up distorting the Holocaust.




by Rabbi Benjamin Blech Comment Email Print Save Share Soon there will be no more eyewitnesses. The Holocaust is inexorably moving from personal testimony to textual narrative.



Survivors, those who clung to life no matter how unbearable so that they could confirm the unimaginable and attest to the unbelievable, are harder to find after more than half a century. It is the written word that will have to substitute for the heart-rending tales of woe shared by those who endured hell on earth. That is, after all, all that will remain of six million victims.





Holocaust authors have a daunting responsibility.

Holocaust authors have a daunting responsibility. They must speak for those who cannot, but whose suffering demands to be remembered and whose deaths cry out for posthumous meaning. Their task transcends the mere recording of history. It is nothing less than a sacred mission. Holocaust literature, like the biblical admonition to remember the crimes of Amalek, deservedly rises to the level of the holy.



For that reason I admire anyone who is courageous enough to attempt to deal with the subject. No, there will never be too many books about this dreadful period we would rather forget. No, we have no right to ignore the past because it is unpleasant or refuse to let reality intrude on our preference for fun and for laughter. And John Boyne is to be commended for tackling a frightening story that needs to be told to teenagers today in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas -- a fictional account of the Nazi era that uses the powerful device of a tale told from the perspective of its nine year old hero.



I came to this book fully prepared to love it. Although the publisher insists that all reviewers not reveal its story, the back cover promises "As memorable an introduction to the subject as The Diary of Anne Frank." And indeed the writing is gripping. The style, sharing with Anne Frank the distinctive voice of youth, is extremely effective. One can readily understand why the book has had such a strong impact on countless readers, become required reading in high school Holocaust courses round the country, and is about to be released as a major motion picture.



And yet…



How should one react to a book that ostensibly seeks to inform while it so blatantly distorts? If it is meant as a way of understanding what actually happened -- and indeed for many students it will be the definitive and perhaps only Holocaust account to which they will be exposed -- how will its inaccuracies affect the way in which readers will remain oblivious to the most important moral message we are to discover in the holocaust's aftermath?



Without giving away the plot, it is enough to tell you that Bruno, the nine-year-old son of the Nazi Commandant at Auschwitz (never identified by that name, but rather as "Out-With" -- a lame pun I think out of place in context) lives within yards of the concentration camp his father oversees and actually believes that its inhabitants who wear striped pajamas -- oh, how lucky, he thinks, to be able to be so comfortably dressed --spend their time on vacation drinking in cafes on the premises while their children are happily playing games all day long even as he envies them their carefree lives and friendships! And, oh yes, this son of a Nazi in the mid 1940's does not know what a Jew is, and whether he is one too! And after a year of surreptitious meetings with a same-aged nine-year-old Jewish boy who somehow manages every day to find time to meet him at an unobserved fence (!) (Note to the reader: There were no nine-year-old Jewish boys in Auschwitz -- the Nazis immediately gassed those not old enough to work) Bruno still doesn't have a clue about what is going on inside this hell -- this after supposedly sharing an intimate friendship with someone surrounded by torture and death every waking moment!





According to the book's premise, it was possible to live in the immediate proximity of Auschwitz and simply not know -- the defense of those Germans who denied their complicity.

Do you see the most egregious part of this picture? As Elie Wiesel put it, the cruelest lesson of the Holocaust was not man's capacity for inhumanity -- but the far more prevalent and dangerous capacity for indifference. There were millions who knew and did nothing. There were "good people" who watched -- as if passivity in the face of evil was sinless. If there is to be a moral we must exact from the Holocaust it is the "never again" that must henceforth be applied to our cowardice to intervene, our failure to react when evildoers rush in to fill the ethical vacuum.



Yet if we were to believe the premise of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, it was possible to live in the immediate proximity of Auschwitz and simply not know -- the very defense of all those Germans after the war who chose to deny their complicity.



True, Bruno in the story was but a boy. But I have spoken to Auschwitz survivors. They tell me how the stench of burning human flesh and the ashes of corpses from the crematoria filled the air for miles around. The trains traveling with human cargo stacked like cordwood screaming for water as they died standing in their natural wastes without even room to fall to the ground were witnessed throughout every countryside. Nobody, not even little German children who were weaned on hatred of the Jews as subhuman vermin could have been unaware of "The Final Solution." And to suggest that Bruno simply had no idea what was happening in the camp his father directed yards from his home is to allow the myth that those who were not directly involved can claim innocence.



But it's only a fable, a story, and stories don't have to be factually accurate. It's just a naive little boy who makes mistaken assumptions. However that misses the point. This is a story that is supposed to convey truths about one of the most horrendous eras of history. It is meant to lead us to judgments about these events that will determine what lessons we ultimately learn from them.



So what will the students studying this as required reading take away from it? The camps certainly weren't that bad if youngsters like Shmuley, Bruno's friend, were able to walk about freely, have clandestine meetings at a fence (non-electrified, it appears) which even allows for crawling underneath it, never reveals the constant presence of death, and survives without being forced into full-time labor. And as for those people in the striped pajamas -- why if you only saw them from a distance you would never know these weren't happy masqueraders!



My Auschwitz friend read the book at my urging. He wept, and begged me tell everyone that this book is not just a lie and not just a fairytale, but a profanation. No one may dare alter the truths of the Holocaust, no matter how noble his motives.



The Holocaust is simply too grim a subject for Grimm fairytales.