Review: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

***½ / *****

Bruno: "Why do you wear pajamas all day?"
Shmuel: The soldiers. They took all our clothes away.
Bruno: My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away."

Mark Herman's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas overcomes some tricky hurdles: Its German characters all speak English, its story's German locations are in fact Hungarian, and its subject of the Holocaust - in spite of the kid angle - is less than fresh or the stuff of entertainment. Yet this handsome British production - emitting the nostalgically musty high quality of "Masterpiece Theatre" fare - should attract serious filmgoers above a certain age and with above-average tastes. Success here has much to do with the fine cast, Herman's restraint in keeping Nazi and child-dominated film clichés to a minimum, and a clean, engaging story arc that arches from intriguing to downright gruesome.

The film's premise sounds like an overwrought film parody of the type that shows up at the beginning of Tropic Thunder: During World War II, the 8-year-old son of a German concentration-camp commandant makes friends with an 8-year-old Jewish prisoner in his father's camp. They play ball and checkers though the barbed wire, with the German boy, Bruno (Asa Butterfield) naïvely oblivious both to his father's role in imprisoning the Jewish boy, Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), and to the camp's nature and purpose. It sounds ridiculous, and yet thanks to a remarkable concatenation of talent, it's horrifying rather than risible.

One key element: A talented ensemble of actors, including both kids and an adult cast that makes their stereotyped roles as real as possible. Also key: Herman, adapting John Boyne's novel, takes his time in setting the scene, beginning with the gorgeously rendered Berlin where Bruno roams with his friends. He's aware enough of his culture's military bent that his playtime is all about pretending to be a soldier or a bomber, but the war isn't remotely real until his father (a chilling David Thewlis) is reassigned to the country, far from any other children. During the long, lonely period that follows, Bruno's slightly older sister gets unsettlingly caught up in Nazi propaganda, and their mother (Vera Farmiga) becomes tense and fragile as she clashes with dad over the nearby "farm" where the emaciated, hard-working "farmers" all wear rough, striped pyjamas and live behind electrified fences. When Bruno and Shmuel finally meet, it's no wonder the former is more interested in talking to another kid than in asking the obvious questions.

It's an earnest story that endeavours to evoke a headspace of pure innocence observing the grasp of pure evil. It's a difficult balancing act for Herman, who faces a challenge in creating a specialized mood that touches upon the horrors of humanity while remaining optimistic, attempting to linger close to Bruno's heart. The film is successful drawing those lines of response, keeping tight on Bruno as he unknowingly descends into hell to keep peace with a friend he will never be allowed to have.

Herman is prone to exaggeration to make his points, painting the Nazi officers loudly to reinforce their brutality, and keeping Farmiga tearful throughout (her speciality). It's impossible to argue the goal of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (to strike an emotional core within the viewer), but the execution can be slippery at times, sluggish at others. Even at 90 minutes, the film often appears to be artificially fattened to fulfill a certain structure, leaving most of the heavy lifting to Butterfield.

However, it has any number of chances to exploit the setting and Butterfield's wide-eyed innocence, but instead, it mines a vast, eerie tension by keeping both boys in the dark. The horror isn't overwrought and obvious; it's delicately wrapped up in information that the viewers have, the children lack, and the adults are struggling to hide or ignore. The performances are similarly subtle; Thewlis is half propaganda-spewing shill, half tired dad trying to bring home the bacon, while Farmiga, the lone Yank performing among the Brits, is achingly sad as a woman trying to be a good wife and a good German, but discovering that means being a bad person. The premise is unquestionably strained, as Butterfield's ignorance becomes more and more unlikely, but from the striking cinematography to the nuanced characters to the refreshingly original approach to the time period, the film has enough going on that it doesn't have to pull too hard on such a slender thread.

Gently nursing Bruno and Shmuel's tender friendship, through the smuggling of food and games played through the fence, Herman is leading to a conclusion that's historically inevitable. To see the material top even those darkest fears is extraordinarily brave in the current film climate and bestows the film with a knockout punch of an ending that elevates its impact to a whole other level. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas ends as an unnerving film that often feels more acceptable as an educational piece than a profoundly rewarding work of drama. It's how it ends that reverberates in the soul long after the film ends.