Holocaust pictures, even one as brilliant as “Schindler’s List,” never impressed me as much as other film fans.
The horrors of that chapter in human history seem too big, too indescribable, for a simple film to convey. I remember seeing the awful film clips taken by U.S. soldiers once they overtook the camps, and those were the definitive images for me.
It’s one reason why I found “Life is Beautiful” so disarming. It approached the subject matter from a unique perspective, but didn’t undermine the horrors or belittle the tragedy of the Nazi war machine.
I had a similar reaction watching “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” a film which views the Holocaust from another curious angle. It follows a German boy who befriends a concentration camp prisoner, a lad very much like himself. But the German child doesn’t understand why the boy wears those funny “Pajamas.”
It’s a story of childhood innocence that underlines the atrocities of the Holocaust in remarkable fashion.
Not everyone share’s my enthusiasm for the story. That’s putting it mildly.
Here’s Rocky Mountain News film critic Robert Denerstein finds plenty at fault with the film:
“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” seems pretty much an exercise in audaciously poor judgment. In focusing on the son of a Nazi officer and concentration camp commandant, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” too often finds itself acting the poor witness: The movie spends too much time looking in the wrong direction.
Other critics weren’t so diplomatic:
“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.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
To me, showing the horrors from the perspective of the people in the camps is an obvious way to tell the story. But showing how an innocent boy could be oblivious to something so horrific is a fascinating way to reinforce just how inhuman the camps were.
Check out “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” and let me know if you agree.
(Photo: A young concentration camp prisoner bonds with a German child through a fence in “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.”)
No related posts.
on 
on 
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I tend to agree with you on holocaust films, it is just too big and too awful of a topic to have a movie do it justice. No film can match the terror and drama of what really happened. Maybe that is why you relate to the smaller, more focussed films – they don’t try to tell the whole story, just a small sliver of it from a different point of view. (As an aside, I watched the CNN Presents documentary on the Jonestown Massacre last night, it was a very well done program and highlighted another horrific occurrance from history that I believe no film could accurately portray.)
I haven’t watched any of these films you listed above. My movie tastes really changed after I became a mother and now I always want a happy ending. From what I know about “Life is Beautiful,” after seeing clips and trailers, I didn’t want to end up a wreck when viewing it through a parents’ prism and thinking about my family in their shoes.
Tink — I suspect my movie tastes and preferences will be altered come January with Otto Tico Toto comes our way (name options still being explored).
Sorry I missed that CNN broadcast … sounds fascinating.
I’ve been debating on whether or not to see this one. A bunch of Germans with British accents just strikes me as a bit odd. I have always had issues with movies set in a foreign country, yet all the actors are speaking English. It always removes me slightly from the story.
That is a funny — and very annoying – trait in movies. I was watching the trailer for “Valkyrie” and I thought – why isn’t Tom Cruise speaking with a thick German accent?
It’s like when Kirk and Spock beam down to a planet — and wouldn’t you know it they all speak English!