Movie Review

Director, Mark Herman, based on a novel by John Boyle; starring: Asa Butterfield (Bruno), Vera Farmigia (Mother), David Thewlis (Father), Amber Beattie (Gretel), Jack Scanlon (Shmuel), David Hayman (Pavel), 94 minutes, PG, 2008.

Bruno is eight and his life is perfect. He lives in Berlin in a big house in a loving family. His father is a rising star in the SS; his grandparents live close by; he has friends his own age and they play on safe streets patrolled by the army. This all changes when his father gets a big promotion and they have to move a long way away to another big house in the country. Unfortunately they are quite isolated and there are no children his age around. He is bored and unhappy. A tutor has to be brought in to teach Bruno and his sister, Gretel.

Bruno does notice that from his bedroom window he can see people beyond the trees working on a farm. There is also an old gentleman who wears pyjamas and works in their kitchen. One day Bruno skins his knee and the old man (Pavel) puts a bandage on it. In their conversation Bruno discovers that Pavel used to be a doctor and he finds it puzzling, but interesting, that he gave it up to peel potatoes!

One day, in some rebellion, Bruno gets out of the yard and goes for a ramble in the woods. He comes to the barbed wire around the farm/ camp and there encounters a boy his age. "Shmuel? I’ve never heard a name like that!" says Bruno. "We're different," says Shmuel. One day, Shmuel is brought into the house to work. When Bruno encounters him with surprise he offers him some food but when they are discovered talking with one another he asserts, Peter like, that he does not know the boy nor has he given him food. The next time he sees Shmuel by the fence his face is bruised and cut, obviously the result of a beating by the SS officer that found them together. Shmuel says that he is worried because he cannot find his father in the camp and Bruno offers to help him find him, as a form of expiation for getting Shmuel in trouble. Shmuel gets some pajamas for Bruno and Bruno digs under the fence and they join the other farmers only to be herded off to gas chambers in a horrific and tragic final scene.

It is slightly distracting that all the Germans speak in high-toned English accents. Even Formigia, who is an American, adopts a "pukka" Brit accent. Its effect is to add to the air of willful innocence on the part of the family and to reinforce that they are not different and distant from us. They are like us and we are like them sharing a common humanity. Genocide did not end in the modern world with the exposure of Auschwitz. This is truly a tragic story, not only in the sense that bad things happen to innocent people but also in the sense that Bruno's parents challenge The Fates by presuming to make the world a better place by enslaving and eliminating the undesirables in their midst. In the end these Fates grind them under. Their child is killed by the warped and evil ideology they adopt in order to keep the world pure.

Humanity is portrayed at two levels. Bruno portrays the innocence of childhood (Why do the farmers wear pyjamas? Why did Pavel give up being a doctor to peel potatoes?). Yet he still betrays Shmuel even after asking him to be his friend and never declares that he has a new friend. He colludes with his mother in never acknowledging that there is something untoward about the farm. The adults give up their innocence to a warped ideology and become agents of evil. Bruno's father argues, like any oppressed executive, that he is doing his job to make the country a better place and besides that it provides a pretty good life for the family!

Soren Kierkegaard composed a parable to explain The Incarnation. In it he told of a king who dons the clothes of a beggar in order to woo a "humble maiden" for his own true love. Bruno, despite his English School Boy innocence is a Christ Figure who willingly dons the pyjamas of an Auschwitz inmate and crosses the barbed wire plane of privilege to join Shmuel in his world of suffering. He is overwhelmed and killed by it.

Boyle wrote this as a children’s story in two and a half days! While clearly not for young children it could profitably be used with a youth group.