The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | PAL, 16:9 (720x576) VBR | 01:30:31 | 6.39 Gb
Audio: AC3 5.1 @ 384 Kbps: English, French, Spanish; English (Audio Description) AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps
Subs: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Arabic, Hindi
Genre: Childhood Drama, War Drama
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | PAL, 16:9 (720x576) VBR | 01:30:31 | 6.39 Gb
Audio: AC3 5.1 @ 384 Kbps: English, French, Spanish; English (Audio Description) AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps
Subs: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Arabic, Hindi
Genre: Childhood Drama, War Drama
Set during World War II, a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.
Vera Farmiga, David Thewlis, and Asa Butterfield star in Little Voice writer/director Mark Herman's adaptation of John Boyne's novel concerning the forbidden friendship that between an eight-year-old German boy and a Jewish concentration camp prisoner in World War II-era Germany. The innocent son of a high-ranking Nazi commandant, Bruno has been largely shielded from the harsh realities of the war. When Bruno discovers that his father has been promoted and that their family will be moving from Berlin into the countryside, he doesn't take the news well. Increasingly bored in his sprawling yet dreary country abode and forbidden by his mother from exploring the backyard, young Bruno searches for something to do while his older sister plays with dolls and vies for the attention of handsome Lieutenant Kotler (Rupert Friend). One day, bored and gazing out his bedroom window, Bruno spies what first appears to be a nearby farm; his parents refuse to discuss it, and all of the inhabitants there are curiously clad in striped pajamas. But while Bruno's mother naively believes the "farm" to be an internment camp, her husband has sworn under oath never to reveal that it is in fact an extermination camp specifically designed to help the Nazis achieve their horrific "Final Solution." Eventually defying his mother's rules and venturing out beyond the backyard, Bruno arrives at a barbed wire fence to find a young boy just his age emptying rubble from a wheel barrel. Like Pavel, the kitchen worker who cooks all of Bruno's meals, the young boy is wearing striped pajamas. His name is Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), and before long the two young boys become fast friends. But the closer these two boys grow, the more Bruno becomes awakened to the horrors unfolding all around them. His mother is catching on quickly as well, a fact that causes great tension in her marriage to Bruno's father. Later, after Bruno swipes a piece of cake for Shmuel, Lt. Kotler accuses the Jewish boy of stealing and delivers a swift punishment. When Bruno's father announces that the young boy and his mother will be going to live with their aunt in Heidelberg, Bruno grabs a shovel and makes his way to the camp, setting into motion a tragic and devastating sequence of events.Synopsis by Jason Buchanan, Allmovie.com
Mark Herman's "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" depends for its powerful impact on why, and when, it transfers the film's point of view. For almost all of the way, we see events through the eyes of a bright, plucky 8-year-old. Then we begin to look out through the eyes of his parents. Why and when that transfer takes place gathers all of the film's tightly wound tensions and savagely uncoils them. It is not what happens to the boy, which I will not tell you. It is – all that happens. All of it, before and after.
Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is a boy growing up in a comfy household in Berlin, circa 1940. His dad (David Thewlis) goes off to the office every day. He's a Nazi official. Bruno doesn't think about that much, but he's impressed by his ground-level view of his father's stature. One day Bruno gets the unwelcome news that his dad has a new job, and they will all be moving to the country.
It'll be a farm, his parents reassure him. Lots of fun. Bruno doesn't want to leave his playmates and his much-loved home. His grandma (Sheila Hancock) doesn't approve of the move either. There seems to be a lot she doesn't approve of, but children are made uneasy by family tension and try to evade it.
There's a big house in the country, surrounded by high walls. It looks stark and modern to be a farmhouse. Army officials come and go. They fill rooms with smoke as they debate policy and procedures. Bruno can see the farm fields from his bedroom window. He asks his parents why the farmers are wearing striped pajamas. They give him one of those evasive answers that only drives a smart kid to find out for himself.
At the farm, behind barbed wire, he meets a boy about his age. They make friends. They visit as often as they can. The other boy doesn't understand what's going on any more than Bruno does. Their stories were told in a 2007 young adult's novel of the same name by John Boyne, which became a best seller. I learn the novel tells more about what the child thinks he hears and knows, but the film is implacable in showing where his curiosity leads him.
Other than what "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is about, it almost seems to be an orderly story of those British who always know how to speak and behave. Those British? Yes, the actors speak with crisp British accents, which I think is actually more effective than having them speaking with German accents, or in subtitles. It dramatizes the way the German professional class internalized Hitler's rule and treated it as business as usual. Charts, graphs, titles, positions, uniforms, promotions, performance evaluations.
How can ordinary professional people proceed in this orderly routine when their business is evil? Easier than we think, I believe. I still obsess about those few Enron executives who knew the entire company was a Ponzi scheme. I can't forget the Oregon railroader who had his pension stolen. The laughter of Enron soldiers who joked about killing grandmothers with their phony California "energy crisis." Whenever loyalty to the enterprise becomes more important than simple morality, you will find evil functioning smoothly.
There has not again been evil on the scale of 1939-1945. But there has been smaller-scale genocide. Mass murder. Wars generated by lies and propaganda. The Wall Street crash stripped people of their savings, their pensions, their homes, their jobs, their hopes of providing for their families. It happened because a bureaucracy and its status symbols became more important than what it was allegedly doing.
Have I left my subject? I don't think so. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is not only about Germany during the war, although the story it tells is heartbreaking in more than one way. It is about a value system that survives like a virus. Do I think the people responsible for our economic crisis were Nazis? Certainly not. But instead of collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in rewards for denying to themselves what they were doing, I wish they had been forced to flee to Paraguay in submarines.Review by Roger Ebert
IMDB 7,8/10 from 101 763 users
Wiki
Director: Mark Herman
Writers: John Boyne (novel), Mark Herman (screenplay)
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewlis, Rupert Friend, Vera Farmiga, Amber Beattie and other
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
Special Features:
Audio Commentary with writer/director Mark Herman and author John Boyne
"Friendship Beyond the Fence" featurette (19:40)
Deleted Scenes (with Optional Commentary by writer/director Mark Herman and author John Boyne):
-Musn't Go Near Them (0:57)
-Moving Out of Berlin (1:25)
-No One to Play With (2:32)
-Less Freedom (0:42)
-Sound from Above (0:27)
Bonus Trailers
All thanks to original releaser - abufaisal
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