the boy in the striped pajamas movie reviews

Life on the farm

Two boys become friends through a barbed wire fence in "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas."

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.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Vera Farmiga as Mother
• Jim Norton as Herr Liszt
• David Thewlis as Father
• Sheila Hancock as Grandma
• Rupert Friend as Lt. Kotler
• Richard Johnson as Grandpa
• Jack Scanlon as Shmuel
• Asa Butterfield as Bruno
• Amber Beattie as Gretel
• Cara Horgan as Maria
• David Hayman as Pavel

Written and directed by

• Mark Herman

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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Reviews

[The film] touches on important questions about the costs of human life and the dangers of hatred in a stirring, heart-wrenching tale.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 7, 2024

A child’s-eye view of the Holocaust, this family film is likely to trigger big questions from younger viewers.

Full Review | Nov 4, 2022

“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” asks several powerful questions about war, family, and morality. It also gives us a glimpse into a part of our world’s history that is still hard to look at but should be reckoned with.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 19, 2022

A valiant attempt to tell a small scale story about an unimaginably huge period in our history, and while it may drag in places, it has its heart in the right place and a devastating ending that will take your breath away.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 31, 2021

At once painful, tear-jerking, and deeply emotional, this is a film that cannot be easily forgotten.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 28, 2020

British director Mark Herman's film... is moving and thought provoking, and handles its subject matter with great sensitivity. It deserves to be seen by young and old.

Full Review | Nov 12, 2020

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas may very well be 2008's most important family film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 4, 2020

Despite the film's various weaknesses, however, it's hard not to be moved by its ending.

Full Review | Sep 2, 2020

A superb adaptation of John Boyne's novel bears witness to the unyielding horror of the Holocaust through the eyes of a child.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 4, 2020

This intelligent film offers a fresh perspective on an oft-portrayed period, asking the viewer to question his own assumptions about what he expects and wants from such a telling.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 12, 2018

Not without its qualities, the movie ultimately does a disservice to the very people it purports to represent.

Full Review | Original Score: 69/100 | Jul 12, 2012

[Director] Mark Herman knows how to milk the melodrama from every scene, but viewers may feel a little icky about the experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

A film dealing with the Holocaust really should be a little less clumsily executed, manipulative and contrived than this.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 14, 2011

Built upon a powerful but gimmicky end, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas would make a fine short. As a full-length feature, though, the pajamas wear thin quickly.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 14, 2009

The result isn't a deep film, but rather a profound one.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 13, 2009

We are left in no doubt about the brutality of what's going on there but it's almost entirely off-screen. Still, the film is terribly confronting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 1, 2009

This writer can't remember witnessing a harder-hitting kids' movie denouement than the one that closes this microcosm of middle-class German family life in WWII.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/6 | Apr 24, 2009

Much of the film depends on our ability to suspend disbelief and see the world as Bruno sees it. It has a finale designed to shock.

Full Review | Apr 24, 2009

You may get halfway through and wonder why it's getting so heavily recommended here. Once you've experienced it in its entirety, you'll know why.

For me, the pluses far outweighed any misgivings I had with this ultimately very moving film.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2009

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a German concentration camp, a forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has ... Read all Through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a German concentration camp, a forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences. Through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a German concentration camp, a forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.

• Mark Herman
• Asa Butterfield
• David Thewlis
• Rupert Friend
• 594 User reviews
• 147 Critic reviews
• 55 Metascore
• 7 wins & 7 nominations

Top cast 26

• Lieutenant Kotler
• (as Zac Mattoon-O'Brien)

• Berlin Cook

• Palm Court Singer

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Bruno's parents are named Ralf and Elsa, but in the credits of the film they are listed as "Father" and "Mother." This is a tribute to the novel, in which the narrative focuses solely on Bruno's point of view.
• Goofs At Auschwitz, (and other camps) there were double fences, 3 meters apart, around the compound. Too much distance for an outsider to touch an insider.

Shmuel : I wish you'd remembered the chocolate.

Bruno : Yes, I'm sorry. I know! Perhaps you can come and have supper with us sometime.

Shmuel : I can't, can I? Because of this.

[points the electric fence]

Bruno : But that's to stop the animals getting out, isn't it?

Shmuel : Animals? No, it's to stop people getting out.

Bruno : Are you not allowed out? Why? What have you done?

Shmuel : I'm a Jew.

• Crazy credits Quotation displayed before the opening titles: "Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows - John Betjeman"
• Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Quantum of Solace/Madagascar 2/Soul Men/Repo! The Genetic Opera/The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
• Soundtracks Rhythm For You Written by Eddy Christiani and Frans Poptie Courtesy of APM Music

User reviews 594

• Smells_Like_Cheese
• Nov 28, 2008
• How long is The Boy in the Striped Pajamas? Powered by Alexa
• Is "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" based on a book?
• How do Bruno and Shmuel meet?
• If the movie is set in Germany, why do they have English accents?
• November 26, 2008 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• United States
• arabuloku.com
• Official Facebook
• Chú bé mang pyjama sọc
• Kerepesi Cemetery, Budapest, Hungary
• Heyday Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $12,500,000 (estimated)
• Nov 9, 2008
• $40,416,563

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 34 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Movie Review | 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas'

Horror Through a Child’s Eyes

By Manohla Dargis

• Nov. 6, 2008

See Bruno (Asa Butterfield). See Bruno run. See Bruno see a farm. See Bruno see “farmers” in “striped pajamas.” See Shmuel (Jack Scanlon). See Shmuel at the farm. See Shmuel run because men are yelling. See Bruno run to his new house. Come home, Bruno, said Mother (Vera Farmiga), in a British accent. Come, Bruno, come. See Bruno and Shmuel meet across an unguarded barbed wire fence. See Bruno and Shmuel laugh, perhaps because there are no soldiers guarding this fence, even though, in John Boyne’s allegorical children’s novel on which this film is based, the farm is Auschwitz. See Bruno, whose blue eyes and dark hair tend to make him look like a Nazi moppet, eat the food he said he would give to Shmuel. See Shmuel look even sadder than usual. See Bruno learn that the farmers are Jews.

See Bruno ponder the kind of false paradoxes that only an authorial contrivance, like the artificial naïf, would face: Jews are supposed to be bad, and yet Shmuel is nice. See Bruno tunnel, with astonishing rapidity, into the camp. See the film’s director, Mark Herman, take his camera into a gas chamber where naked men and children huddle, and two little hands clasp before the film cuts to black. Do not see the blood and excrement on the walls or the dead piled on the floor. See Mother howling outside the camp in the rain as the camera hovers over her. See Father (David Thewlis), realizing that his son has been swept away by the Nazi death machine he himself helps run, look horror-stricken. See the Holocaust trivialized, glossed over, kitsched up, commercially exploited and hijacked for a tragedy about a Nazi family. Better yet and in all sincerity: don’t.

“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) for some mild violence.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by Mark Herman, based on the novel by John Boyne; director of photography, Benoit Delhomme; edited by Michael Ellis; music by James Horner; production designer, Martin Childs; produced by David Heyman; released by Miramax Films. At the Cinema 1, 2, 3, Third Avenue at 60th Street, Manhattan. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes.

WITH: Asa Butterfield (Bruno), Jack Scanlon (Shmuel), Amber Beattie (Gretel), David Thewlis (Father), Vera Farmiga (Mother), Richard Johnson (Grandpa), Sheila Hancock (Grandma), Rupert Friend (Lieutenant Kotler), David Hayman (Pavel), Jim Norton (Herr Liszt) and Cara Horgan (Maria).

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The boy in the striped pajamas.

The home life of the Nazi commandant of a World War II concentration camp appears bizarrely serene in Mark Herman's grave and powerful drama "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," but the innocent are bound to suffer when humanity is abandoned.

By Ray Bennett , The Associated Press September 10, 2008 9:00pm

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Opens: Friday, Sept. 12 (U.K.) (Disney)

LONDON — The home life of the Nazi commandant of a World War II concentration camp appears bizarrely serene in Mark Herman’s grave and powerful drama “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” but the innocent are bound to suffer when humanity is abandoned.

The Bottom Line Empty

A fine adaptation of John Boyne’s novel, which was aimed at children, the film is more adult in its approach, though its stern message remains important for youngsters. Set for a Miramax release Nov. 7 in the U.S., it’s a tough-minded lesson for those who would perpetrate genocide, and it should register strongly with a long afterlife on DVD.

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Boyne’s tale is starkly cautionary, and writer-director Herman handles a difficult topic with great sensitivity, drawing splendid performances from his young actors with David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga and the other grown-ups reliably efficient.

It’s a tale about the unlikely friendship between two little boys. Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is the sheltered and entirely self-absorbed son of a Nazi officer (Thewlis) living in innocent luxury. Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) is a Jewish boy living behind barbed wire in the direst state of hunger and fear.

Bruno and his family — impressionable sister Gretel (Amber Beattie) and their gentle mother (Farmiga) — have just moved from Berlin to the countryside, where strict but loving Papa has taken up his new command running a prison camp.

The naive and scatterbrained Bruno sort of knows that his father is a Nazi officer but has no clue what it means. At the new house, Pavel (David Hayman), a shuffling and obedient servant brought in from the camp, cowers before brutal adjutant Lt. Kotler (Rupert Friend), but Bruno barely notices, while Gretel develops a crush on the explosive young Nazi.

Bruno is deluded about what life is like at his father’s camp because faked videos showing its inhabitants happy and well-fed have been screened at home for visiting dignitaries and Red Cross inspectors.

Lonely and curious, he slips away from the house and finds Shmuel lurking in desperation by the fence. Deeply ignorant of the truth of Shmuel’s circumstances, Bruno adopts him as friend. It’s a friendship that leads to shocking revelations and a powerful conclusion that may cause many viewers to seriously question their assumptions.

Production: Miramax Films, Heyday Films. Cast: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, Amber Beattie, David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga, Rupert Friend, David Hayman. Director-screenwriter-executive producer: Mark Herman. Producer: David Heyman. Executive producer: Christine Langan. Director of photography: Benoit Delhomme. Production designer: Martin Childs. Music: James Horner. Costume designer: Natalie Ward. Editor: Michael Ellis. Sales agent: Miramax Films. Rated PG-13, 94 minutes.

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What it's about.

You've probably watched and heard about enough Holocaust films to expect a formula, but you might want to put all that aside going into The Boy in Striped Pajamas. Bruno, the son of a WWII Nazi commandant forms an unlikely friendship with a Jewish kid his age in his father's concentration camp. The film is World War II told through Bruno's eyes, and while you might not get why this movie is so highly praised in its first scenes, the twisting and profound second half will have you recommending it to everyone in need of a moving story well executed, or quite simply a good cry.

It’s a heartwarming story of two children on opposite sides of the fences in a Nazi concentration camp. Just be prepared to cry. I’ve warned you.

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• DVD & Streaming

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

• Drama , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

• Asa Butterfield as Bruno; Jack Scanlon as Shmuel; Vera Farmiga as Elsa; David Thewlis as Ralf; Amber Beattie as Gretel; Rupert Friend as Lieutenant Kotler; Jim Norton as Herr Liszt; Richard Johnson as Grandpa; Sheila Hancock as Grandma; David Hayman as Pavel

Home Release Date

• Mark Herman

Distributor

• Miramax Films

Positive Elements   |   Spiritual Elements   |   Sexual & Romantic Content   |   Violent Content   |   Crude or Profane Language   |   Drug & Alcohol Content   |   Other Noteworthy Elements   | Conclusion

Movie Review

Ah, little boys. They’re impish, curious, messy and daring. Most mothers of boys have at least a few gray hairs because of their sons’ escapades. Sometimes boys really can stop fidgeting at the table and squirming during church. Sometimes they can even resist the temptation to torment their sisters. Rarely, though, can they ignore the all-consuming urge to explore—and this thirst for excitement can get them into trouble.

Enter 8-year-old Bruno, an inventive young German who loves to read adventure books and investigate whatever is outside. When we meet him in the early 1940s, his father, Ralf, a high-ranking military officer, has just accepted an important position within the Nazi war effort. The family packs up their city home in Berlin and moves to a country house located near what Bruno thinks is a strange farm.

Naive Bruno doesn’t fully understand what’s happening in his new world, including why his 12-year-old sister, Gretel, suddenly spurns a treasured doll collection and decorates her bedroom with Nazi youth posters. He can’t comprehend why old Pavel, a “farmer” who works in the kitchen, gave up being a doctor so he could peel potatoes. Nor can he fathom why Pavel and all the other “farmers” wear striped pajamas.

Bruno especially struggles with his mother’s order to stay inside their very uninspiring, walled-in front yard. After all, he thinks the “farm” just beyond the woods out back must be full of fun, food, animals and potential playmates.

So, when his tedious tutor, Herr Liszt, and the lackluster life indoors become too much for him to tolerate, he begins to sneak off. He runs through the trees to the “farm,” where he meets Shmuel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas who lives behind a huge electrified fence.

[ Note: The following sections contain plot spoilers. ]

Positive Elements

Bruno’s mother is reasonably patient with his disappointment when they move, but she isn’t silent, either. She tells Bruno that sitting around being miserable won’t make things any happier. In response, for a while he tries his best to be content.

Despite the adults around him who demean Jews, Bruno ultimately learns to see Shmuel and Pavel through the lens of his own positive, firsthand experience with them. While his friendship with Shmuel wouldn’t necessarily be called courageous (Bruno is bored and unaware, and Shmuel is the only friend available), it does reveal the beauty of innocence, which underscores the wickedness of the adults’ cruelty. And while Bruno is at first intimidated into siding with his father’s and the surrounding soldiers’ hateful opinions of his Jewish friends, he realizes that something is very wrong, and he questions his dad’s moral goodness.

One day Shmuel’s father goes missing at the “farm.” Bruno offers to help his friend search for him, saying, “It will be like an adventure!” Shmuel gets a pair of spare “pajamas” for Bruno so he won’t draw attention, and Bruno digs a (precise and impossibly large) trench under the fence. Until he comes face to face with the horror inside the wire, Bruno seems to just be having fun. But when he sees enough to become frightened, he gathers himself and makes a clear decision to face his fear in order to help his friend.

This act is redemptive, in a way, since Bruno turned his back on Shmuel a few days (weeks?) earlier. In that circumstance, he lied in such a way that Shmuel is thought to be a thief and is subsequently beaten by soldiers (offscreen).

Elsa’s ignorance about what’s going on in war-torn Germany is much less excusable than her son’s, and it seems she chooses to remain oblivious regarding what occurs at the “farm.” But when she finally realizes how grave the situation is—that her husband is in charge of mass exterminations—she begins to justly rail against him, demanding that he immediately quit. She’s also alarmed by Gretel’s growing vehemence against Jews.

While raising questions about where duty to one’s country ends and conscience and morality begin, the film winds these themes together to teach a powerful lesson about human equality. Prejudice is rightfully shown to be based on lies and hatred. And it’s reinforced that every one of us has a responsibility to choose rightness and truth, even when the tide of a society is utterly against us.

Spiritual Elements

Bruno says a bedtime prayer with his father, thanking God (in Jesus’ name) for His protection. It’s a sweet children’s rhyme that seems real to the boy, and its candid trust feels oddly situated against Nazi hatred. A preacher says another prayer at Ralf’s mother’s funeral service.

Sexual & Romantic Content

Precocious Gretel holds twentysomething Lt. Kotler’s forearm in an adoring way and is embarrassed when Bruno publicly reminds her that she is only 12.

Violent Content

Oblivious to the real-life awfulness they’re mimicking, Bruno and his young friends in Berlin act like fighter planes and pretend to shoot machine guns. In a different play scene, Bruno runs through the woods flailing a stick and shouting, “Die! Die!” A little blood shows up when he falls out of a tire swing and skins his knee.

Nazis shove Jews onto wagons while dogs nip and bark. When inky black smoke rises from the furnace at the “farm,” Lt. Kotler quips, “They smell even worse when they burn, don’t they?” Later he and Ralf yell at Pavel, and Kotler beats the old man to death. We see the lieutenant grab Pavel’s head and hit him, and we hear yelling and more powerful blows after Kotler drags him into another room. The next morning, Maria scrubs the blood from the wood floor where Pavel lay.

Kotler also yells at Shmuel and Bruno. We don’t see the officer hurt Shmuel, but it’s clear that he does when the boy disappears for days and finally returns with a badly beaten face.

Ralf calmly announces his mother’s death. We’re told she died in a bombing, but circumstances could be viewed as suspicious because she’d stridently opposed the Nazi party line even when Ralf warned her not to. Similarly, Lt. Kotler talks himself into a corner one night by casually mentioning that his father emigrated to Switzerland before the war. Ralf reminds the lieutenant that he must report his father as a defector, and Kotler is disciplined for his oversight by being moved to the war’s front line.

And then we arrive at the final minutes of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas : Nazi soldiers herd men and boys into a gas chamber. We see their terrified expressions as they’re jammed against one other in the dim room. A soldier wearing a gas mask rains down poison through a rooftop opening. And prisoners howl until there is silence.

Crude or Profane Language

In making its righteous points about prejudice and racism, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas resists the temptation to brandish epithets, but does include anti-Semitic remarks. Ralf claims that Jews “aren’t really people at all.” Gretel calls them “evil, dangerous vermin.” Liszt teaches his pupils that Jews are a destructive enemy of culture that cost Germany the first world war. He also tells Bruno that if he finds a “nice Jew” he “would be the best explorer in all the world.”

Bruno calls his mother “stupid.”

Drug & Alcohol Content

The adults have champagne at a going-away party and later drink wine with dinner. Ralf smokes cigarettes, sometimes in front of his kids.

Other Noteworthy Elements

Bruno and truthfulness share a strained relationship. He frequently lies to his mother about his whereabouts, disobeying her rules. He fibs about the contents of his book bag. And when he lies to Lt. Kotler, saying Shmuel stole food, his selfishness costs Shmuel dearly.

Elsa and Ralf argue loudly about his role in the war, causing Gretel and Bruno to huddle together for comfort. Elsa calls Ralf a monster whose own mother couldn’t love him.

Crowds of Jewish men and boys are forced to strip naked. Huddled together, and with the camera looking on mostly from above, only their upper torsos are seen.

Set against the horror of the Holocaust, Bruno’s naiveté and investigative spirit look that much more innocent. The boy’s inability to comprehend prejudice and killing, and his instinctive, uncomplicated ability to see Jews as real human beings starkly contrast Nazi cruelty, brightly illuminating the viciousness and irrationality of the bloodshed.

A significant plot twist—which is one spoiler I’ve tried very hard to keep out of this review—demonstrates with breathtaking force how the consequences of evil behavior eventually affect all those involved, perpetrators included.

Beyond this, Elsa’s role may serve as sobering testament against complacency. After she blindly follows Ralf to his new post, she struggles with her own attitude toward Jews but does nothing significant to help them, even as she begins to recognize their unjust fate. Her conformity should remind us of our own apathy in other situations, and it challenges us to question situations until we fully understand them, fight for what we believe in and stand up for those who cannot defend themselves.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas , which is based on a book by John Boyne, also illustrates how powerful words and images are. Bruno, who likely represents thousands of his contemporaries, doesn’t always know what to make of his father’s job. That is, until a propaganda film he sees calls the death camp—the “farm”—a wonderful place with “hearty, nutritious meals,” and the camera shows seemingly happy Jews smiling and waving. After the film, Bruno proudly hugs his father.

It’s often said that if history is forgotten, it’s likely to be repeated. So perhaps the most profitable thing about the film is the fact that—without including any of the gore and explicit violence seen in similar films—it reminds us about our global history of brutality. We must recall and keep recalling the Holocaust and other atrocities like it. And never overlook the millions who have needlessly died at the hand of hatred and greed.

Heartbreaking and soul-rending, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is, then, one more piece of the puzzle that ultimately forms the picture of who we were, who we are and who we don’t want to become.

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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Review

12 Sep 2008

Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, The

Tackling the Holocaust takes a brave soul. To turn such tragedy into fiction, however noble your intention, is to lurk over the trapdoor daubed exploitation. Even Spielberg’s Oscar winning Schindler’s List had Shoah director Claude Lanzmann hiss about “kitsch melodrama”. Tackling the Holocaust through the eyes of a child reeks of madness. How do you sell death camps to the Hogwarts generation?

Yet Mark Herman’s adaptation of John Boyne's novella succeeds by granting the story the glint of fable. At eight years old, the prejudice curdling his teen sister is alien to Bruno (Butterfield). So hungry is Bruno for companionship, he sees only a friend in the boy in raggedy stripes sitting across the wire. Shmuel (Scanlon) is just hungry.

If Herman’s style falls prey to the bone-china stiltedness of Sunday TV, it is sticky with dread. His camera rarely escapes the commandant’s house, a modernist castle stiff with its own locks, bars, and a house-slave in lank ‘pyjamas’; perversely washed in a dappled summer light, as if on the edge of a strange dream. Only later do clouds gather.

Both Farmiga and Thewlis furnish their parental roles with real humanity. Thewlis, especially, makes sense of the contradiction in this caring father overseeing genocide. The child-actors look right - Butterfield has the angelic gaze of antique photographs - but their prep-school delivery feels stiff.

None of which prepares you for the ending. Mustering a dark, vicious power, Herman passes out of fairytale into the sickening coils of history. There is an image, of a gas-masked soldier pouring Zyklon B through a rainstorm, so disarming even Lanzmann will recoil.

REVIEW: “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”

Obviously there have been several powerful films that have dealt directly with the Holocaust. “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is a unique look at this murderous and genocidal scar on world history. It’s based on John Boyne’s 2006 novel of the same name and looks at the subject through the eyes of an 8-year-old boy. It’s a tender but crushing tale of the loss of innocence as we watch this young boy discover the truth about the world around him. Some critics have said it exploits or trivializes the Holocaust with others going as far as to call it offensive. I found it to be a careful yet devastating drama that ultimately succeeds in the end.

Asa Butterfield, better known for his more recent starring role in “Hugo”, plays Bruno. His father Ralf (David Thewlis) is a Nazi SS officer who gets a new assignment requiring him to move with his family from Berlin to the countryside. Bruno’s mother Elsa (Vera Farmiga) supports her husband’s decision. But Bruno finds himself alone and missing his friends back in Berlin. His loneliness and boredom spurs his curiosity and he begins noticing several interesting things about his new location. One is a mysterious “farm” in the distance that he sees from his bedroom window but is forbidden to visit or ask about. He’s also intrigued by a house servant who he notices is wearing what looks like striped pajamas. Of course we know the servant is Jewish and a captive, but through young Bruno’s eyes things are more confusing.

One of the most engaging things about the movie is that writer and director Mark Herman is able to keep us inside of Bruno’s head even though we know exactly what’s going on outside of his knowledge. I found the film to be very effective at conveying the feeling of discovery as Bruno learns more. Perhaps his biggest lessons come not from his twice-a-week tutor who bombards him with all sorts of Nazi propaganda and revisionist history, but from a young Jewish boy. Bruno encounters the boy after sneaking away from his house and stumbling across the “farm”. Of course it’s actually a Nazi execution camp and the boy, named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), sits on the other side of an electrified fence. The two quickly develop a friendship. It is Shmuel who begins to shed light on what this “farm” really is and causes Bruno to question both his father and his cause.

The movie never loses sight of the fact that Bruno is only 8-years-old. He struggles with what he’s seeing and his attempts to reconcile certain things with his desire to see his father as a good man is heartbreaking. Even when his mother finds out why they’ve moved to the country and furiously confronts Ralf, we still witness these things through Bruno’s child-like reasoning. But there is an emotional balance. While we spend most of our time with Bruno, we know of the atrocities that are taking place almost entirely off-screen. Yet these atrocities are relayed to us very well in often subtle ways.

The performances throughout the film are fantastic. Farmiga is one Hollywood’s better actresses and she shows that here. I also appreciated Thewlis’ portrayal of a man who often times puts his role of father in complete subjection to his duties as a Nazi soldier. But it’s young Butterfield who gets the vast majority of the screen time and he is quite good. He draws a lot of sympathy and emotion  and it’s always great to see a young actor able to pull that off. I also enjoyed his scenes with young Scanlon. While Butterfield is better in their scenes, they both handle the material nicely.

I can see where “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” may put off some people. It’s hard to watch especially as everything comes to a head at the end of the film. In fact, it’s a movie I’m in no rush to see again. That isn’t due to any major shortcomings with the picture. It’s due to the film’s intense emotional punch that stuck with me for several days. I was incredibly moved and while there are some legitimate questions that could be asked about the story, the movie’s main point resonated with me. “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” asks several powerful questions about war, family, and morality. It also gives us a glimpse into a part of our world’s history that is still hard to look at but should be reckoned with.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

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6 thoughts on “ review: “the boy in the striped pajamas” ”.

Great review, Keith! I never saw this film, but I’ve heard the title from time to time and always wondered what it was about. Sounds compelling. I’m definitely interested in seeing this film now. I would also be interested to see Butterfield in another role after seeing Hugo.

Thanks a lot! It’s certainly worth seeing. I had it on my watch list but have been putting it off. REALLY glad I made time for it.

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REALLY great movie! (The novel’s really good, too.)

I’ve heard the novel is good but I haven’t read it.

I read the novel as a kid. Real gut-punch. Saw the movie in the last year or so.

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Review: 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas'

A young German boy befriends a Jewish boy in a nearby concentration camp, unaware of the enormity of the horror going on behind the fence.

• By Peter Rainer

Nov. 08, 2008, 12:00 a.m. ET

In " The Boy in the Striped Pajamas ," the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust are glimpsed through the eyes of a 9-year-old boy, and somehow this makes them seem even more unspeakable. Bruno (the marvelous young actor Asa Butterfield ) is the son of a high-ranking Nazi officer, Ralf ( David Thewlis ), who moves his family from Berlin to a remote countryside home that is walled off from a "farm" in the far distance. In fact, what is being walled out is a concentration camp, with Ralf acting as its commandant.

Bruno's mother Elsa ( Vera Farmiga ) is kept in the dark for a long time about her husband's murderous duties. When she learns, she snaps. Not so scrupulous is Bruno's elder sister Gretel ( Amber Beattie ), who is enamored of a sadistic young Nazi lieutenant ( Rupert Friend ) and adorns her bedroom walls with Hitler Youth posters. Isolated and uncomprehending, without pals to play with, Bruno is bored stiff. One day, although forbidden to do so, he ventures beyond the wall. Running up against the barbed-wired camp enclosure, he befriends a Jewish boy his own age, Shmuel ( Jack Scanlon ).

Bruno's innocence, like Shmuel's, prevents him from perceiving the enormity of the horror. He wonders why Shmuel can't leave the "farm" and play. Scruffy and starving, Shmuel replies matter-of-factly that he can't because he's a Jew.

It took me a while to adjust to the mostly British-sounding cast standing in for Germans, but at least it's a time-worn convention. Writer-director Mark Herman, adapting the novel by John Boyne , is careful to stage the film almost entirely from Bruno's point of view. This makes for a far creepier experience than if the story had been told straight. It's as if we are watching the ritualistic sacrifice of an innocent.

Bruno is the darling of his family and his father is quite tender with him. The audacity of "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" lies precisely in Herman 's decision to portray Ralf as a loving father. Thewlis's performance is so layered that we can believe this man is capable of a monstrousness equal to his familial devotion. And yet the great conundrum of the Holocaust is that it was perpetrated by human beings, not monsters. Few movies have rendered this puzzle so powerfully. Grade: A (Rated PG-13 for some mature thematic material involving the Holocaust.)

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David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga, Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, Rupert Friend Mark Herman (based upon book by John Boyne) Rated PG-13 94 Mins. Miramax

It is several hours after I have attended a press screening for "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," the opening night film for the 2008 Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis, Indiana.

I cannot shake the images from my mind.

Based upon a novel by John Boyne that was primarily directed at children, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is the story of a most extraordinary friendship between two 8-year-old boys, Bruno (Asa Butterfield, "Son of Rambow") and Shmuel (Jack Scanlon).

Bruno, you see, is the son of a fierce, dutiful concentration camp commandant (David Thewlis, of the "Harry Potter" films) during the holocaust...Shmuel is a young boy that Bruno meets one day while exploring the forbidden areas behind the new family home that curiously overlooks a mysterious "farm" and people who appear to dress in pajamas.

I have long professed my love for British family films. British family films are far more intelligent, far less "busy" and they simply don't condescend to children or families.

Is it possible to make a family film about the holocaust? If "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" was an American film, it would undoubtedly become a sentimental, weepy film or would simply dissolve into a sea of manipulation. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" avoids these manipulations of the story and, rather courageously, presents the story of this friendship with great realism and stark truth.

"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is a mesmerizing film that has left me pondering its images, its words and its actions long after I have left the theatre.

Seldom have I seen such truth and such innocence embraced by such harrowing imagery.

Given that Disney owns Miramax, some have expressed concern about the "Disneyification" of this story...rest assured, the studio's release of this film "as is" is a bold, courageous and I dare say not so market friendly gesture.

"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," as directed by Mark Herman ("Little Voice"), avoids Hollywood stylings and glossings over. While the film does simplify the holocaust, much to the dismay of some historians, it does so solely by seeing the holocaust through the eyes of 8-year-olds who seem almost impossibly naive.

We are introduced to young Bruno as he and his young friends are mock "flying" around the sidewalks of Berlin. It becomes obviously right away that something is amiss...while the young boys innocently play, Jews in the background are being carted away. Bruno is oblivious to the world around him, protected as he is by being the son of a rising German soldier. Even when the family relocates to the countryside estate that overlooks the concentration camp, Bruno remains ignorant to the true devastation that surrounds him. His innocent inquiries about the farmers, the pajamas, the heavily smoking chimneys, the horrid smells and the unusual stories of those who surround him are typically met with minimal, if any, explanation.

When he meets Shmuel, who is sitting alone on the other side of a barbed wire fence, he believes the young boy to be playing some kind of game in his pajamas with a number on them.

I am heartbroken, even now, simply remembering the words exchanged between the two boys.

"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is undoubtedly not a film that every child should view, and I would strongly recommend that children view it in the company of a parent or adult who can help process the often intense words and imagery contained within this PG-13 rated film. Some might say this film is far TOO heavy for children...I disagree. Children who have been able to view the cartoon violence of "The Dark Knight" or "Iron Man" would do well to see the real impact of hatred, violence and prejudice contained within this film.

Is it devastating? Absolutely. It is also the truth.

As the two young boys, Asa Butterfield and Jack Scanlon are stellar in their ability to evoke complete and utter innocence despite the world that surrounds them. As the film winds down, this blend of innocence with stark reality is astounding to watch unfold. Blind to a full understanding of what surrounds them, the two children enter their friendship seemingly unaware of what it all means and where it's all headed.

Nearly as harrowing as watching the friendship of these two young boys unfold is observing Bruno and his family as it becomes more and more obvious the full spectrum of what is going on around them.

While Herman wisely avoids the "Disneyification" of this film, so too he avoids painting anyone with broad strokes of evil or good. As Bruno's father, David Thewlis is astounding as a man who does, it seems, truly love his family and yet is completely blinded by duty and nationalism. Initially, his wife (Vera Farmiga, "The Departed") is fiercely loyal and speaks disparaging of the Jews...yet, over time, the entire plot unfolds and she begans to see an evil within her husband she never new existed. Farmiga's transformation from dutiful wife to destroyed mother and spouse, especially towards the end, is devastating. Finally, Amber Beattie is spot-on perfect as Bruno's older sister, a young girl who is both easily influenced towards supporting Hitler while remaining tenderly protective of her brother.

The supporting cast shines, as well, including Rupert Friend as an up-and-coming lieutenant with a secret of his own, Cara Horgan as a house maid/caregiver, and David Hayman's portrayal of an older, ill-fated Jew.

James Horner's original score is exemplary, and the production design of Martin Childs perfectly blends elements of innocence within the stark surroundings.

After receiving its North American premiere as the opening night film of Indianapolis's Heartland Film Festival, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is scheduled for a limited nationwide release on November 7, 2008.

By no means an easy film to view, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" may very well be 2008's most important family film. Simply, yet with integrity, Mark Herman has created what is easily one of 2008's best family films and a film that will evoke a wide array of thoughts, emotions and conversations from audience members of all ages.

by Richard Propes The Independent Critic Copyright 2008

‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’: movie review

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The film’s PG-13 rating is a good indicator of the appropriate age for younger audiences, although older viewers should brace themselves, too. Even though it unfolds almost entirely through a child’s eyes and contains no on-screen violence, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” packs as devastating a punch as an adult-oriented drama about the subject. Its concluding five minutes are almost impossible to watch.

But that, of course, is the point of the story, which begins in Berlin in the early stages of World War II, when wide-eyed, 8-year-old German boy Bruno (the remarkable Asa Butterfield) learns his military father (David Thewlis) has received a promotion that requires the family to move to “the countryside.”

The family’s new home is remote and drab, almost fortress-like. Bruno complains about not having anyone to play with except his sister (Amber Beattie), and she’s no fun. And when he asks his mother (Vera Farmiga) about the nearby “farm” he can glimpse from a corner of his bedroom window — a farm where everyone wears striped pajamas — she immediately tells him to forget about all that and forbids him from ever going near there.

But a child’s curiosity cannot be stopped, and soon Bruno is spending his afternoons talking through an electrified wire fence with a little boy named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), who lives on the farm with his father, wears the same odd pajamas and is constantly asking him to bring back some food.

Director Herman rarely pulls us out of Bruno’s naive view of the world, which adds a layer of unsettling ominousness to scenes such as the one in which Bruno asks his father what that horrible smell coming from the farm’s chimneys is. (“They burn rubbish there sometimes,” his dad replies.)

Despite its focus on children, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” shrewdly keeps us apprised of how the adults in the story are responding to their new environment. The better he does at his job, the more short-tempered and emotionally distant Bruno’s dad seems to become, illustrating how many Nazi soldiers lost their perspective — and their souls — as the German army’s power grew.

Bruno notices his mom’s increasingly nervous, restless moods, and he’s struck, too, by how his sister has started covering the walls of her room with Nazi paraphernalia and Hitler posters. But mostly Bruno just concentrates on finding new ways to play with his friend. By maintaining its focus on its child protagonist, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” lulls you into the false security of an innocent’s worldview, helping its finale achieve its pulverizing power.

The movie might result in some difficult questions from children about the Holocaust, but they are conversations well worth having.

“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”

Rating: PG-13 (for some adult themes) Cast: Vera Farmiga, David Thewlis, Rupert Friend, David Hayman and Asa Butterfield Director-writer: Mark Herman Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

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THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

What You Need To Know:

(BB, C, L, V, S, N, A, D, M) Strong moral worldview in a pronounced morality story, with the message that evil destroys itself, where Nazi concentration camp commandant loses his son to the evil system he helped establish with some Christian prayers and a funeral but they are made by or focus on the NAZI villains; one light profanity and comments saying “dirty Jew” and other anti-Semitic slurs; off-screen violence with intense sounds of beating a Jewish servant and showing the impact of a beaten Jewish boy, skinned knee, and a gas chamber scene with cyanide pellets being dropped on naked men and boys, then sounds of people trying to get out of the gas chamber; no sexual behavior, although a few light references; upper male nudity from the back; alcohol use; smoking; and, lying, deception, propaganda movie about concentration camps, and betrayal.

More Detail:

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS opens with 8-year-old Bruno playing with his friends on the streets of Berlin while National Socialist Swastika flags wave in the breeze. When he gets home, his father, a Nazi officer, says he has just been promoted. He tells Bruno and his sister, Gretel, that they will be leaving their beautiful home in Berlin.

Bruno does not want to leave his friends. His mother throws a big going away party. The next day, they travel to a lonely mansion in the middle of nowhere. Through his window, Bruno can see a farm nearby where all the residents are wearing striped pajamas. His father is the commandant of the concentration camp, but all the commandants are sworn to secrecy not to tell anybody what they do.

Bruno is very bored. Being an explorer at heart, he eventually sneaks over to the concentration camp, where he talks through the electrified barbed wire to a Jewish boy named Shmuel. Bruno and Shmuel become fast friends. Bruno steals food from his own kitchen to give to Shmuel.

Bruno’s sister, by the way, takes an interest in a handsome young lieutenant, who is a hyper anti-Semitic National Socialist. An old Jewish man who works in the kitchen takes care of Bruno when he falls and skins his knee. He turns out to be a doctor. The lieutenant beats the man to a pulp when he makes a mistake serving the family at dinner.

Bruno’s mother becomes increasingly depressed, and the lieutenant lets slip that the burning smoke stacks smell bad because they smell worse when they are burned than when they are alive. Their father and the tutor try to teach Bruno and Gretel how vile and evil Jews are, but Bruno cannot believe it because of his best friend Shmuel.

Eventually, the mother becomes so depressed and the family becomes so strained by their proximity to the extermination camp, that the father decides to send them away. Feeling guilty that he’s already betrayed his friend Shmuel once when he let Shmuel take a beating for a cupcake Bruno gave him, Bruno decides to dig his way into the extermination camp to help Shmuel find his father. In the camp, the mechanical clockwork of the business of extermination sweeps Bruno along toward the inevitability of the gas chamber.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS is based on a best-selling children’s book. In the press notes, David Heyman, the producer behind the Harry Potter franchise and Mark Herman, the screenwriter, both discuss how difficult it was to make the book into a movie. The book is intended to help children remember the Holocaust. It is a morality story proving the biblical principle that the wages of sin are death.

However the story works as a book, its transformation into a movie produces a disappointing, depressing, hopeless, one-note film. Although the acting and production quality are good, the story seems slow at points because, as they say, it is on the nose or too obvious, too preachy and too clear about the points it is trying to make. It leaves no room for imagination. From the beginning, the story is weighed down by an impending sense of doom.

Books are hard to turn into movies. THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMSAS has a good message and a good heart and may get an A for effort. But, it’s hard to imagine people will want to go to a movie to be slowly depressed.

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The boy in the striped pajamas.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 62 Reviews
• Kids Say 222 Reviews

Based on 222 kid reviews

Kid Reviews

If you’re planning on watching this movie with children I would recommend watching by yourself first. mostly it’s not bad, there is some offensive language used against Jewish people. There is a beating off screen, but other than that, there really isn’t much violence. It also has a couple of people in the background groaning and being tortured. The end may be too upsetting for young teens which shows to children and a bunch of men go in a gas chamber and die. An old man’s buttocks is shown for a brief second. other than this this movie isn’t too bad.

This title has:

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• Great messages
• Too much drinking/drugs/smoking
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My heart hurts for this movie

Should've been way too good..

• Too much swearing

Showing this in schools is embarassing

Shoking and terrifying, what to watch next.

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The Boy in The Striped Pajamas: Movie Review and Critique

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Words: 2043 |

11 min read

Published: Aug 6, 2021

Words: 2043 | Pages: 4 | 11 min read

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The boy in the striped pajamas: summary and analysis, the boy in the striped pajamas: movie review (essay), works cited.

• Boyne, J. (2006). The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Random House.
• Crowe, D. (2008). The Holocaust in the eyes of children. The English Journal, 97(4), 25-31.
• Edelman, L. (1995). The Ghetto Fights. Holocaust Library.
• Finkelstein, N. G. (2003). The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Verso Books.
• Gilroy, A. (2011). Ethnic and racial studies. Between camps: Race and culture in postmodernity, 34(3), 458-469.
• Gleeson-White, J. (2011). Double vision: The Holocaust and representation. Australian Humanities Review, (50), 89-102.
• Roth, J. K. (2006). Teaching about the Holocaust: essays by college and university teachers. University Press of America.
• Snyder, T. (2015). Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. Crown/Archetype.
• Wistrich, R. S. (2003). Holocaust and genocide studies. The long road back: Jewish intellectual refugees in post-war Europe, 17(2), 180-199.
• Zuckerman, M. (1999). A dream undone: The integration of soldiers in World War II. University of California Press.

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