“The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” was released in 2008.
The film based on the novel of the same name by Irish writer John Boyne.
It is a historical-drama film, directed by Mark Herman and produced by David Heyman.
This film has an interesting and new perspective to a difficult topic. A young boy Bruno befriend with another child Shmuel. Strange is that Shmuel is on an adjacent camp and Bruno’s father leads the camp. Friendship of these children will end tragically.
There are two main characters; eight-year-old Bruno who is a son of the Nazi commandant and Bruno’s friend Shmuel who is a Jewish inmate.
Bruno is really naïve and ingenuous, because he doesn’t even think of questioning of the purpose of adjacent camp, whereas Shmuel had to try to survive alive there.
Bruno’s father is also very important character in the film. He is a Nazi commandant but his children don’t know it. There are two totally different sides in his character; a loving family man and the other hand a heartless killer. His wife Elsa knows little bit of her husband’s job. Consequently, she has to suffer because of this secret. Bruno’s sister called Gretel thinks most of the time herself rather than the cruel world around her.
Asa Butterfield as Bruno is a quite good on his role even though he seems too naive order to be credible. However he is a skilled actor, in addition, he is only ten-years-old in the movie. Actor of Bruno’s father is David Thewlis. I think he wasn’t doing his best role in this film. He was way too bland. Jack Scanlon (as Shmuel) plays eight-year-old Jewish boy in the film. In my opinion he was the most plausible actress because he wasn’t trying too much.
The soundtrack for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is composed by James Horner. Music is big part of this film because almost in every scene you can hear some music, which wasn’t a good thing . The soundtrack is beatiful but it just doesn’t match with the film’s tough topic. Those songs would work better in some love story.
I had read the book before I see the film. I think the book is really impressive so my expectations were high when I started to watch the film. After seeing the film, I was disappointed. Characters weren’t feel as real than they were in the book. The ambience was different. All in all, the main difference between the book and the film is that in the film the denouement reveals too quickly.
I’ve read the book, too, and I think it’s good. You image the character’s nature very well, and they sounds similar than they’re in the book. Good job, I think! 🙂