The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas: Cruelty and irony of war!

The boy in the striped pyjamas (2008) is a compelling and painful tale of the horrors of world war II. The unique feature of this film is that it tells the brutality of the war without actually showing it in as many images. The whole film is narrated through the eyes of an 8-year old Bruno (Asa Butterfield), son of a German Nazi soldier. Even before Bruno understands what the war is all about and why Jews are not ‘People’ as his father tries to tell him, he is consumed, ironically, by its cruelty.

Director: Mark Hermon

Film Clip

The film is based on a famous novel of the same name written by the Irish novelist John Boyne. The film is directed by Mark Herman.

The film raises many questions about war. In fact, the most important aspect that the film tries to send across is that war originates and is fought first in the mind. What we see outside is just the expression of the brutalities caused by the mind for no gain. Even as six million Jews were killed in the war (the film has a reminiscence of it), the Nazis tried to convince people that the Jews had to be killed as they were subhuman and a threat to the greater nationhood of Germany. Bruno, the protagonist, however, finds it extremely difficult to fathom this ‘reality’ and hence becomes an ironic victim of sorts of the same war.

The film has been narrated with a touch masterly craftsmanship with brilliant performances by the actors, especially Asa Butterfield as Bruno and Jack Scanlon who acts as the little Jew, Shmuel. The friendship that these two build up in their brief period of meeting, makes one sit back and reflect whether breaking barriers after all is such a big difficulty at all! 

- Melwyn Pinto SJ