The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

"He used to be a doctor once, but gave it all up to peel potatoes."

                                                                     -Bruno

 

     A good one but  I rate it 7.9 because the ending left me hanging.

Here's the IMDB summary:

     Set during World War II, a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.

[caption id="attachment_338" align="aligncenter" width="470"] The Boy in the Striped Pajamas[/caption]

     Last night, I wanted to have an outlet of my suppressed emotions for the past days (I think I'm very good at it) and so I searched for a drama movie I could cry over and played it as soon as I got home from work. The impression that it's a story about the friendship of 2 innocent 8-year old boys made me excited even more as I knew that this would be a CLEAN movie (very few nowadays).

     A Nazi family was forced to move out from a good home because the father's duty calls them to stay in a place near a concentration camp of captured Jews. Imagine how non-conducive for growing up that guarded place could be for Bruno, the typically adventurous boy who is the center of the story, and his 12-year old sister. They are kids and they may not be the captured people in the movie but they were not free.

[caption id="attachment_312" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Bruno and Pavel's conversation. I think the old man died because of the beating. :([/caption]

     There was a servant Jew (Pavel) in their new place--an old thin man, barely walking normally maybe because we wasn't really part of the food allocation in that 5-storey mansion. Bruno, in the only conversation he had with this man while he was peeling potatoes, found out that Pavel used to be a doctor before he was captured and forced to serve in that Nazi mansion.

     Stop right there! I got my chance to cry when I pondered that that could really be relative to the calling of my life.

What plan has God been investing on my life that I missed out on because of my slavery to the enemy? Is what I'm doing right now THE BEST THAT THERE IS or just something to HELP ME SURVIVE?

     I could actually just stop the movie right there and meditate on that question.

 

[caption id="attachment_314" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Bruno DARES to explore![/caption]

     But moving on. Bruno, in his quest to find friends (or at least other kids in the area), daringly set out through a forbidden exit in the mansion (because they literally weren't allowed to go out). As he walked through some distance, he reached an isolated side of the concentration camp fenced with electric barb wires and saw an also 8-year old Jewish boy wearing Pajamas (and so the title) alone on the on the other side of the fence. They consequently became good friends that even as they faced one last serious  trouble in their life, they stuck together.

[caption id="attachment_313" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Schmuel, the boy in the striped pajamas[/caption]

 

     The story's ending left me hanging (or maybe I just didn't like how it ended that I wanted some more events to happen) that I even got to dream of it in my sleep to end it myself in my subconscious mind. This is not a summary so to know the good yet shocking ending of the movie, you have to see it for yourself ;)

     I still haven't move on :(