Fridae

We're not sure how to react to this film. On the one hand, it is a handsome, well-crafted production. On the other hand, it is morally abject.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas tells a Holocaust story from the point of view of an 8-year-old German boy named Bruno (Asa Butterfield). His father (David Thewlis) is a Nazi officer who has been newly assigned to take charge of a concentration camp. His mother (Vera Farmiga) knows that the camps are exterminating Jews but feigns ignorance. His sister (Amber Beattie) is so in love with the Nazi ideology, she puts up Hitler posters in the house.

Bruno is a lonely boy who doesn't know the truth. Forced to play by himself in the fields, he meets a boy in "striped pajamas" behind an electrified fence. (Hence, the title.) They strike a happy friendship, even though Bruno's questions like "What do you burn in those chimneys?" hardly gets him any closer to the truth.

Directed by Mark Herman (Little Voice), The Boy in the Striped Pajamas asks you to see the Holocaust from the point-of-view of the family of a concentration camp commandant. But why? Why should we care about them? Why should we give them any more sympathy than the terrorists of 9/11 and the Bali bombing, or George W. Bush who started a false war that killed thousands of innocent Iraqis and Americans?
We honestly can't see the point or purpose of this film, whose central conceit is cheap and unforgivable.