My friends and I have a running joke regarding our annual Oscar pool. If we’re not familiar with the short films, documentaries or other obscure fare up for Oscars that night, we always check off the ones involving the Holocaust. They usually win.
No disrespect to the horrors of the Holocaust, just an observation of how Oscar voters vote.
But John Anderson, a film critic at The Washington Post, wants to ruin our Oscar pool - and handcuff artists to boot.
Here’s his take on “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” the new movie about a German boy who befriends a concentration camp prisoner:
“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is yet another attempt to revisit a sorrowful event in history that should never be forgotten or used for entertainment.
No topic should be off limits for art, especially the Holocaust. And anyone who saw “Striped Pajamas” knows it’s not a rollicking good time at the movies. It’s a haunting story, well told, that envisions the Holocaust through a fascinating, and original prism.
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I'm an award-winning journalist and film critic with more than a decade of experience in newspapers, magazines and the Web. I'm a member of both the Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association and the Denver Film Critics Society.
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I haven’t seen “Striped Pajamas” yet, but based on what I’ve read about it, I’m inclined to agree with you that it doesn’t cross the line into exploiting that tragedy for entertainment purposes.
One example of a movie that did cross that line is “Life is Beautiful.” The fact that Roberto Begnini used the holocaust as a backdrop for his “goofy clown” routine is inexcusable. And sadly, the fact that he won an Oscar for it was not surprising.
JimmyC — I really need to watch “Life is Beautiful” again … it amazes me that Begnini’s career totally tanked after all the love he received for that film. I must say I wasn’t offended by it … but I can certainly see how it could be viewed that way. He’s not exactly a subtle performer … and the subject does require a delicacy that would seem utterly beyond his reach, at least on paper.
Obviously it’s a matter of opinion whether or not the film was exploitative or not. But what bothered me was that Begnini spent so much time doing his goofy schtick, and spent almost no time acknowledging the tragedy that was taking place around the characters. It felt less like a movie about the Holocaust, than a movie about a goofy guy who happens to become part of the Holocaust. Millions of people are being slaughtered, and Begnini thinks what we should care about is whether or not this guy can keep his kid distracted with pratfalls. Who cares?
And there’s also the fact that he essentially made the same movie several years later, using the Iraq War as a backdrop. (How’s that for bad taste-especially since the war is still going on?). But this time nobody was going for it, since the movie tanked and he didn’t win any more Oscars, thankfully.