If the high angle shot of the Jew’s in the gas chamber, crammed together bewildered and confused, didn’t show how helpless they were, the close up of Bruno and Shmuel must have, you saw instantly the frustration in their faces at not knowing what was going on, and Bruno’s anxiety to leave as soon as possible. It took longer to clearly see what as going on the book, because the description took a couple of pages, in the film the saw their reactions and feelings so visibly that you felt them yourself.
They cleverly used pathetic fallacy, the bleak bland colours of the tempestuous weather matches the mood the audience feels during the last scenes when the father is searching desperately for his son as he inadvertedly walked to his death, though maybe it wasn’t so clever, a tacky trick, a cliché, both overused and unoriginal; although it has a good effect adding to the audiences anxiety (as the clouds become darker, the rain becomes heavier and thunder becomes louder, they lose hope gradually), it looses the film credibility as it has been used so many times; it cheapens the quality. The book rather couldn’t create that kind of anxiety, only the curiousness of what was going to happen to Bruno and Shmuel, and the heartbreaking blow you get when you realise what has happened, also the empathetic pain you feel for the parents when they do eventually search for their son, but all the while know it’s in vain.
Their use of the music deserves acclamation, it starts off sombre then progressively gets louder, the tempo enhances, the pitch increases, and the volume amplifies, from a small melancholy melody, to a piercing, ear-splitting, shriek, which is exceedingly unpleasant and unbearable, and reflects the feeling of the Boys and the Jews and Bruno’s family. The book’s last chapter was more of a miserable sorrow, the movie adds apprehension to that through the music and illustrates the horror that was the reality.
There was a memorable point in the film where Bruno had spied on a film his dad was showing to some evidently important people, about the camp, it was a positive scene with children playing and people laughing and a café and non of those iconic uniforms or “pyjamas” as Bruno perceived them to be. When he’d eventually gotten into the camp Bruno recognized it as being from the film, and realised that it was not true, he got to the huts to see all of these Jews kept in decrepit and cramp conditions, so many of them shoved into one tiny space, no sanitation, no room to breathe and no hope. The setting was moving because real or not, it is wretched to see people being treated in such a horrific way. No more than livestock in an abattoir, were the Jews to the Nazi’s and to witness it through the eyes of an eight year old is simply traumatizing. You couldn’t actually see how the Jews had to live in the book, not because it was hard to imagine, but because it wasn’t described, the film makers had a chance to use their visual advantage over the book to provoke as much emotion as possible and I’d say they did it well in showing the huts.
Butterfield’s character Bruno had a good effect on the audience showing the naïve little boy, slow to understand what everything around him meant, wholly matching Bruno in the book, except the book’s Bruno seemed more selfish in his actions against Shmuel involving Kotler, the film Bruno has more of a pious façade, you understand more just how scared he was when he betrayed Shmuel. He delivered his lines a bit stiffly to say the least, but we’ll chalk that up to Butterfield’s inexperience, and besides during those awful last scenes his delivery wasn’t that important, and you can clearly see the transitions from anxious to go home for dinner, to genuinely fearful and confused.
Shmuel was played well by Scalon, portraying the Jewish kid who although so young felt he had nothing left to hope for other than a daily visit from a friend, his uncanny acceptance of the situation he’s stuck in makes you feel so helpless, and a stronger sorrow than you feel in the book when he’s more nervous about finding his father. You saw the emotion alteration in Shmuel when Bruno became frightened so did he, despite expecting nothing out of the ordinary.
Bruno’s father the Commandant, how do you play such a character? The cruel seemingly heartless man who takes husbands away from wives, parents away from their children, and murders them all, and in the end and of the people he massacred were somebody’s children, yet you saw the pain and angst he felt when he lost his own son, how do you play such a character? David Thewlis came off just as John Boyne’s book intended him to; the loving dad overseeing genocide of thousands was remarkably played by Thewlis; he embodied paternal love and demonic hatred, not an easy thing to do. In a way losing his son was poetic justice, his killed many peoples children thus deserving to lose his own, at his hand too. In the book you never really saw the father loving his son, just fathering him, until the end when he went looking for him did you realise the love was there but just not shown, the film captured his caring for his son at times, just enough so that you were aware of it.
I did enjoy the way the mother was conveyed starting off so ignorant herself but relapsing into depression after her realisation. In the end of the book, the mother’s emotions were only vaguely described, you could only envision a mother’s pain, losing someone you love, and it provokes empathy so in the book it was left not described for you to fill in the gaps. They went with a different angle in the film, they chose to show exactly what the mother was feeling and you could effectively see the wound in heart through her eyes, and hear the sting in her soul through her screams, the helplessness you feel for her is agonizing.
The final seconds in the gas chambers conveyed the ending of the book so much more intensely. There were high angle shots of the Jews as they piled in, depicting their inferiority towards the Germans. The close up of Bruno and Shmuel holding hands represents how they’re meant to be enemies but in their innocence are just not. Seeing the close up of the Jews emphasizes their reactions, making you feel sympathy, but more so when you see Bruno and Shmuel‘s reactions, the guilt then sweeps over you as you notice you feel more for the rich German boy than the persecuted Jews, it doesn’t feel right that you should feel that way, but you remind yourself that it’s only because you now Bruno and his story. The lighting in the gas chambers are dark representing the cruelty of this, but I noticed more so how that would be the last light they see and how depressing that is. By this time the music had just become a sharp screech, and as the pace got faster it showed time running out. The screen goes black when the chamber doors shut; there is only the sound of the Jews struggling to breath with Bruno and Shmuel in the midst. Then nothing. You’re left in silence to absorb the desolation and horror and ultimate rage you feel, so deeply, so strongly, so powerfully. It all feels so real, as you the see the panning backwards of the gas chamber showing the pyjamas on the floor, confirming the deaths. I think the ending was effective in provoking the right emotions prior to the massage the book gives out, but part of the message the book gives out, about it couldn’t happen again in this day and age, was missed out entirely. Overall the film was successful, in getting people to think, especially the teenage minds it was aimed to.
