last post for a while

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is about a friendship, a family, and fate. It is about secrets and about the danger of trying to keep them for too long from too many. And it is about the process by which two friends, two children, and two parents come to see the truth at different intervals and times. Ironically, when an SS Officer is transferred to Auschwitz and brings his family to live nearby, the only window that can see the camp is in 9 year old Bruno’s room. He is, you might say, the first “to see” and his mother soon follows. In time, or rather by the end of the story, the whole family “sees”.

Some have criticized the movie for its implication that it would have been entirely possible to have lived next door to Auschwitz, and even, to have been married to the commandant of such a place or to have had such a man as a father, and yet not have known what was happening. To those who believe that those who deny knowing are merely excusing themselves, such a conception flies in the face of what they believe to be the case.And they have for that reason, objected to the central premise of the movie.

Everyone in this movie has secrets. The stormtrooper, Kotler, tries to keep his father’s objections to the Reich a secret. Commandant Ralph swears to keep the purpose of the camp a secret from all and insists on keeping his own mother and wife’s opposition to Hitler a secret. Bruno keeps his daily explorations of the prison camp secret from his family. The maid keeps Bruno’s secret a secret. Bruno’s mother intends to keep the nature of her husband’s work a secret from her children … and in the end, everyone pays because this eight year old kid and his parents are oblivious to the dangers of what he is doing.

Lastly, I think the most disturbing thing to me as I watched this movie is to realize how effectively a movie can shape and mold a person’s perceptions. As the movie draws to a close and you watch Bruno crawl under the fence in prison garb and join Smuel to go look for Shmuel’s father, you find yourself wanting to yell to him “Don’t! You’re a great kid and you could get killed!” But then you remember that the camps were entirely full of “great kids” (though in truth most children of pre-working age were killed as soon as they entered a camp like Auschwitz) and that the disaster is not about to happen so much as it has been happening for years.

Question for comment: Would anyone object if I just went to thinking more privately about the movies I watch and books I read?