The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Ok, yes, I know I'm VERY behind the times. I mean, I haven't seen Up yet either... but bear with me. Eventually I'll catch up (like in a gazillion years). In the meantime, here's my penny's worth on this movie.

As you all know, it's the story about a German commandant's son who befriends a Jewish child in a concentration camp. They don't have a normal friendship because of the presence of the electric barbed-wire fence between them. However, it is still a fascinating look into Nazi-ism (should that be one 'i'?) from a very fresh perspective.

And as you've all seen the movie already, I know, you all know how it ends. I won't spoil it for the potentially one reader who hasn't, though. But, OMW, what a seriously harrowing ending. Couldn't someone have warned me? I mean - HELLOOOOO??? I should not be watching movies like that. As the ending became obvious, I could feel myself clamming up inside. I just kept thinking - this is Hollywood... they'd never let it happen. It won't happen. His dad will save him. It'll all turn out okay...

And then it happened.

And my heart turned to ice.

And all because of one decision, made from a desire to make it up to his friend for the lie he told.

One split second decision - back in that dining room - to save his own skin or to tell the truth - framed the rest of their friendship, concluding in that horrific way.

As I switched off the DVD player, I was left with several questions: 1) How did that event change his father's paradigm about the 'great' nation? 2) How did it change the relationship between his mother and his father? 3) While I know that he didn't know what the outcome would be of his decision to make it up to his friend for lying, his sacrifice meant the world to his friend. (Can you imagine going through that horror on your own? Wouldn't it have been slightly less horrific if you had a friend like that to hold your hand?)

Ignoring Q3 for the moment, I REALLY wanted to know how the story progressed from there. That wasn't, for me, the end of the story. It was really only the beginning. An event like that changes the world forever, and I want to know about the rest of the story. While I know that the rest of the story probably wouldn't make for a good movie, if it were to be made, I'd go to see it. If the rest of the story were written in a novel, I'd read it.

The mother's portrayal of the moment she learns of the event was... awesome. I have recently begun to appreciate how difficult it is to play that sort of role with any honesty or integrity. Yet, she managed it with such integrity my heart wondered how she learnt about grief, because only someone who knows grief intimately can protray pain like that.

I was surprised, I guess, that I didn't react more to the movie in general. I was surprised at how easy it was to put up a wall between the atrocities I was seeing and my emotions. Maybe, growing up & living in SA, where poverty and inhumanity are something we see all too often, have taught me how to do that. Maybe losing Zoe has taught me how to partition my heart and mind. Maybe the inhumane treatment of the Jews is just so awful to contemplate that I don't.

The problem is, though, that if you don't react to inhumanity, if you wall yourself off, you become immune to it, and ultimately you become able to partake in it. All that evil requires to flourish is that good men do nothing, the saying goes. For that reason, I applaud the mother's reaction to the whole 'work camp' thing. She refused to just accept it and go along with it, despite being married to a soldier. She kept her conscience.

Sometimes, when I look at the way I treat those around me who are less fortunate than I am, I wonder whether I have lost mine, or whether I'm in the process of losing mine, or whether I'm in the process of just discovering mine.

All in all, it's a fabulous movie and definitely worth seeing, despite its ending, or maybe because of it.