The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

November. 07,2008      PG-13
Rating:
7.7
Trailer Synopsis Cast

When his family moves from their home in Berlin to a strange new house in Poland, young Bruno befriends Shmuel, a boy who lives on the other side of the fence where everyone seems to be wearing striped pajamas. Unaware of Shmuel's fate as a Jewish prisoner or the role his own Nazi father plays in his imprisonment, Bruno embarks on a dangerous journey inside the camp's walls.

Asa Butterfield as  Bruno Hoess
Jack Scanlon as  Shmuel
Vera Farmiga as  Elsa Hoess
David Thewlis as  Ralf Hoess
Rupert Friend as  Lieutenant Kurt Kotler
David Hayman as  Pavel
Sheila Hancock as  Grandma Nathalie
Cara Horgan as  Maria
Richard Johnson as  Grandpa
Amber Beattie as  Gretel Hoess

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Reviews

Solemplex
2008/11/07

To me, this movie is perfection.

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Kamila Bell
2008/11/08

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

... more
Fatma Suarez
2008/11/09

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

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Paynbob
2008/11/10

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

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invisibleunicornninja
2008/11/11

Everything about this movie is bad. The acting is bad. The plot is bad. Except for like one or two things nothing is historically accurate. The script is terrible. Its boring. The cinematography is passable. All the characters act like total idiots. No I do not recommend this dumpster fire.

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doranbriscoe
2008/11/12

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is perhaps a decent movie for general audiences with limited exposure to films more substantial than Hollywood's common and lighthearted blockbusters, but I feel it does not have the true depth it is sometimes credited as having. Now, I don't mean to demean anyone who had a powerful experience in viewing this film- it's good for people to have their minds stirred to the tragedies of the past who may or may not otherwise, and the movie has proved effective in bringing its viewers to tears, no doubt, but only through juvenile methods of storytelling. The issue lies in its framework. It attempts to confront a delicately heavy subject, the Holocaust (which is automatically something that should tug at one's heartstrings for obvious reasons). But it doesn't do it in an authentic manner: it stretches the historical events around its plot, instead of the other way around as it should. I needn't go into the details as one can find them with a quick internet search, but the historical inaccuracies are downright blatant- yet integral to the plot. I understand the concept of "the suspension of disbelief" when approaching fiction (and even historical fiction), but the story has to work by the rules that it sets forth. A comparison I will give is Life is Beautiful, another Holocaust film that stretched the truth: however, the world that movie had established was one of hi-jinks and coincidence, and therefore the minor historical liberties it takes are forgivable because the viewer ought not take it at face value. In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, though, the story is presented as true-to-life, and therefore has a responsibility to neither mislead its viewership nor insult their intelligence, which is exactly what it does. Because of this, it doesn't come across as authentic- not only by its historical falsities, but also in its far-fetched unfoldings of its plot, and in the flat traits and utter obliviousness of main characters. Many an audience can look past these shortcomings, it seems, but I found it to be insufferably jarring to the viewer experience, and the ending felt contrived and shallow as a result.

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maoenjoyhappy
2008/11/13

During WWⅡ, Bruno from a wealthy family, whose father is a German soldier, moves to the countryside in Germany where a concentration camp for Jews is back yard to his house. When exploring around his house secretly, he meets a boy dressed in a striped pajama, Shmuel. They are good on terms little by little... and they attempt to conduct an irreversible matter. One thing that I am relieved is that not everyone in Germany agrees with taking part in the WWⅡ, even the top military's relatives as well. Also, it proves that children don't care about their race and background. This needs to be taught to adult at once seriously. This film is one of the best and touching ones that I have ever seen before in regard to WWⅡ. You'll never expect the ending literally and the story goes on making us breathless all the time. I would like people in the world to watch this and this will be helpful to change a way of thinking concerning war and discrimination.

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Jean-Pol Cardin
2008/11/14

My opinion---"The boy in the striped pajamas" is a drama of war realized with the hands of a master by: Mark Herman, he knew how to put his sensibility on a subject that can not be more delicate than this black period of human history, with His deportations, his massacres, his pure horror. A very realistic and very hard movie on the concentration camps, and the story is really poignant, and the characters are well written and superbly interpreted by very convincing actors. Asa Butterfield in the role: Bruno and Jack Scanlon in the role of Shmuel (the Jewish boy) and Vera Farmiga in the role of Asa's mother and David Thewlis in the role of Asa's father. A movie that fills the spectator with emotion, a great film of its kind, because all these wars are also all the misfortunes of the world that fall on the heads of the innocent, a movie to be discovered absolutely for its sensitivity to the skin

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