haven’t written a movie review for a while. so let’s get stuck in…the last movie i watched was the boy in the stripped pj's.
i read the book about two years ago and it blew me away. by the end i was crying like a little girl, and had to force myself to pick it up and finish reading it to it's inevitable heartbreaking ending.
i put off seeing this movie as i *knew* it wouldn't match up to the book, and i knew that however 'great' the film was, to me it would be a huge disappointment.
and so to the story.
it's 1942 in berlin, and a family receives good news: daddy has been promoted…
…however daddy’s promotion is to the post of commandant of an extermination camp.
this story, however, is not about daddy. It’s about bruno, his 8 year old son. bruno is blissfully unaware of what his father is involved in. to him the people in the fields out the back of his new home are just oddly dressed farm workers.
like so many young boys, bruno wants to be an explorer, and it’s bruno’s forbidden explorations in his back garden that bring him to the fence that surrounds the ‘farm’.
behind the fence sits a boy his own age, shmuel. shmuel is experiencing the same loneliness as bruno and very quickly a bond builds between the two boys, but they are both unaware of the horrible reality of their situation.
you can’t say that you “enjoy” a movie like this. you simply observe it and hopefully - if it’s been done right - it will absorb you. also – I feel I need to point out that this isn’t a war film. It’s a film about a family experiencing change beyond comprehension. coming to a realisation that so many must have gone through.
Even though I think the impact of the film was muted due to me having read the novel, I have to say this is one of the most human stories about this dark era that i have ever seen.
this story, however, is not about daddy. It’s about bruno, his 8 year old son. bruno is blissfully unaware of what his father is involved in. to him the people in the fields out the back of his new home are just oddly dressed farm workers.
like so many young boys, bruno wants to be an explorer, and it’s bruno’s forbidden explorations in his back garden that bring him to the fence that surrounds the ‘farm’.
behind the fence sits a boy his own age, shmuel. shmuel is experiencing the same loneliness as bruno and very quickly a bond builds between the two boys, but they are both unaware of the horrible reality of their situation.
you can’t say that you “enjoy” a movie like this. you simply observe it and hopefully - if it’s been done right - it will absorb you. also – I feel I need to point out that this isn’t a war film. It’s a film about a family experiencing change beyond comprehension. coming to a realisation that so many must have gone through.
Even though I think the impact of the film was muted due to me having read the novel, I have to say this is one of the most human stories about this dark era that i have ever seen.
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