The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (film)

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Movie
German title The boy in the striped pajamas
Original title The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
The boy in the striped pajamas.svg
Country of production United Kingdom ,
United States
original language English
Publishing year 2008
length 94 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 12
Rod
Director Mark Herman
script Mark Herman
production David Heyman
music James Horner
camera Benoît Delhomme
cut Michael Ellis
occupation
synchronization

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (original title: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas ) is a British film made in 2008 by Mark Herman , who on the same novel by John Boyne based. The two main roles Bruno and Shmuel were played by the young actors Asa Butterfield and Jack Scanlon . The film was shown in British and Irish cinemas from September 12, 2008. The film was released in German cinemas on May 7, 2009.

action

Eight-year-old Bruno was just playing with his friends in Berlin when he found out at home that the family would move the next day: His father, SS-Obersturmbannführer Ralf, was promoted to commandant of a labor camp . Bruno has a hard time separating from his friends, and the prospect of having his own garden doesn't lift his spirits either. His twelve-year-old sister Gretel, on the other hand, believes that she will also find friends in the country. The new home turns out to be a heavily guarded, gloomy building that also houses the SS offices. Bruno is not allowed to enter the back yard of the property, but from his room window he sees something in the distance that he takes for a farm. He is surprised that the children and “farmers” all wear striped pajamas, just like he has. It's the camp, and mother Elsa confronts Ralf, after all he had explained before the move that the camp was several kilometers away from the house.

Bruno soon meets old Pavel, one of the camp inmates. He has been assigned to the labor service in the camp commandant's house , helps the family out in the kitchen, peels potatoes and looks after the garden. On the instructions of SS-Obersturmführer Kotler, who shows himself to be a National Socialist gentleman through his rough demeanor towards Pavel , he builds a swing for Bruno out of a car tire. After Bruno hit his knee when he fell from the swing, Pavel takes care of him. In conversation, Bruno learns from him that he actually used to be a doctor. The boy concludes that Pavel did not do his job well enough since he is now peeling potatoes.

One day Bruno manages to steal unnoticed into the forbidden part of the garden. He escapes from a shed window into the forest behind the property and suddenly stands in front of the man-high barbed wire fence of the labor camp. In the background men in “striped pajamas” are working on building a barrack. At a corner of the fence, which is covered by a heap of building material, he makes the acquaintance of inmate Shmuel through the barbed wire. Bruno cannot classify his situation, envies him because he can be with “friends”, and asks him what kind of game it is in which all participants have to wear numbers on their pajamas. Because Shmuel stated that he was hungry, Bruno stole a chocolate bar from his mother. However, he eats it himself when Shmuel does not appear at the fence the next day.

Both boys often meet at the fence and become friends. Shmuel tells him that the barbed wire fence is by no means intended to protect the camp from wild animals, as Bruno suspects, but that it should prevent the Jews trapped inside from escaping. He too is a Jew. In addition to food, Bruno also brings his ball with him and throws it over the warehouse fence, but Shmuel reacts anxiously and hands him the ball back through the fence. Bruno and his older sister Gretel have a private tutor, they read texts about the “bad Jews”. When Bruno interjects that there are also “good Jews”, he is reprimanded by the teacher and Gretel. Gretel hangs up Hitler pictures and BDM posters in her room .

When Shmuel is ordered to the villa one day to polish glasses, Bruno greets him happily and gives him food. Obersturmführer Kotler surprises the two and accuses Schmuel of theft. The latter claims that Bruno gave him the meal, but Bruno now denies having ever seen Shmuel - he was obviously afraid of Kotler. Shmuel is punished for his behavior, and Bruno later apologizes to him at the fence. Kotler, in turn, was transferred to the front shortly afterwards, as it turned out that his father was living in Switzerland as a refugee. Before that, he had already aroused the displeasure of the camp commandant because he had indicated to Elsa that the Jews in the camp would be murdered and burned. This was considered secret information that only Ralf knew. Elsa reacts horrified and is disaffected as a result. She refuses her husband and, after the death of his mother in a bomb attack, succeeds in having her children go to relatives in Heidelberg. Gretel agrees, but Bruno wants to stay. However, he has no choice and goes back to the camp the day before departure. Shmuel is depressed because his father has disappeared. Since Bruno has to make amends for him because of his betrayal, he offers Shmuel to help him look for it.

The next day, shortly before leaving, he rushes to the fence with a spade and digs a hole under the fence. Shmuel has got him convict clothing, including a hat, to camouflage that Bruno was not shaved. Both boys go through the camp and look for Schmuel's father. They only want to take a quick look in the men's barracks when a selection suddenly begins. Both boys are driven with the men into a strange barrack, where they are supposed to undress, supposedly to take a shower. Both boys wonder, but like the rest of the men obey. You can see how a soldier with a gas mask empties a poison gas can from above through an opening into the room.

Meanwhile Elsa has noticed Bruno's absence. She alerts her husband Ralf when she realizes that the gate to the courtyard, which is forbidden to Bruno, is open. The security team begins the search with a German shepherd , but in the pouring rain the dog loses its track. Elsa and Gretel are also looking for Bruno, they find his clothes on the camp fence. Elsa collapses. Ralf runs into the camp, he finally stops in front of the gas chambers with a petrified face . The last shot shows the changing room, in which the striped jackets and trousers of the prisoners who have since been gassed, among them Bruno and Shmuel, have got stuck.

Film music

The score was composed by James Horner . It is only sold electronically for download from iTunes and Amazon. The list of pieces is:

  1. Boys Playing Airplanes - 4:13
  2. Exploring the Forest - 2:36
  3. The Train Ride to a New Home - 3:34
  4. The Winds Gently Blow Through the Garden - 5:57
  5. An Odd Discovery Beyond the Trees - 2:51
  6. Dolls Aren't for Big Girls, Propaganda is… - 3:43
  7. Black Smoke - 1:43
  8. Evening Supper - A Family Slowly Crumbles - 7:53
  9. The Funeral - 1:54
  10. The Boys' Plans, From Night to Day - 2:36
  11. Strange New Clothes - 9:53
  12. Remembrance, Remembrance - 5:31

synchronization

Michael Schlimgen wrote the dialogue of the synchronization by the FFS Film- und Fernseh-Synchron , and Susanna Bonaséwicz directed the dialogue .

role actor Voice actor
Bruno Asa Butterfield Lukas Schust
Shmuel Jack Scanlon Ben Hugo
Father Ralf David Thewlis Frank Röth
Mother Elsa Vera Farmiga Sabine Arnhold
Gretel Amber Beattie Lisa Mitsching
grandfather Richard Johnson Otto Mellies
grandmother Sheila Hancock Luise Lunow
Maria Cara Horgan Nadine pasta
Obersturmführer Kurt Kotler Rupert Friend Robin Kahnmeyer
Pavel David Hayman Dieter Memel

criticism

“This film is a cheek. A slap in the face for anyone who believed that there was a limit to the way cinemas dealt with the Holocaust, a threshold that separates historical evidence from pure speculation. The boy in the striped pajamas crosses this threshold. And he does it so bluntly that it takes a while after the credits to understand what you have just seen. A children's story in Auschwitz; a morality tale against the background of the gas chamber; a Nazi family drama with a tragic outcome - it's all The Boy in the Striped Pajamas . And because it combines these three well-known motifs, the children's story, the family story and the story of the Holocaust, in a previously unknown way, it is a novelty in the history of cinema: the film with which Auschwitz becomes fiction. […] Only at the end do they tell what happened in Auschwitz, to the limit of the bearable and beyond. They are playing a game with us, with our taboos, our historical images, our cinema experiences. And they play it well. "

“In The Boy with the Striped Pajamas [...] Mark Herman tries to put his protagonists in the limelight as carefully, unspectacularly and attentively as possible, avoiding overdrive, and mostly only hinting at shrill tones, cruelties and brutalities or avoiding them elliptically. Nevertheless, a kind of mild kitschiness creeps in, also through James Horner's hard-to-bear music glue, which is irredeemably upset and distant. "

  • Stefan Volk from the film service saw it differently , who asked

“Whether you can tell invented stories against the background of the Holocaust. Of course, this is a deceptive question. It suggests that historical horror can in principle be represented in real terms. In fact, however, the Holocaust ( freely based on Watzlawick ) cannot not be fictionalized. So it is important to deal with him honestly, to ask the important questions. Herman manages this surprisingly well. The boy in the striped pajamas is a moving, stirring, never maudlin film that approaches the Holocaust in an irritatingly naive, affectionate way and precisely thereby reveals its perverse banality. "

“It is to the great merit of the makers of this film to dare to visualize the difficult-to-transpose original, not only because of the Holocaust theme, but also because of the unusual view from the perspective of a little boy. […] An important and praiseworthy filmic contribution against oblivion - sensitive, moving and exciting to look at! "

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2011 (PDF; test number: 117 071 V).
  2. Age rating for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas . Youth Media Commission .
  3. See synchronkartei.de
  4. Auschwitz as fiction: "The boy in the striped pajamas"
  5. Eggebrecht, Harald: Kino: “The boy in the striped pajamas” Cute naive . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 7, 2009 p. 12.
  6. http://www.film-zeit.de/Film/20383/DER-JUNGE-IM-GESTREIFTEN-PYJAMA/Presse/  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Excerpt from the film review in film-dienst , issue 10/2009.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.film-zeit.de  
  7. http://www.fbw-filmbeval.com/film/der_junge_im_gestreifte_pyjama Critique of the German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) .