The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

I've never wanted a movie to end more than "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," a distinctly original film about the Holocaust. By distinctly original, I mean it's the first film to reduce 6 million dead to mere cliches while targeting children as its core audience. What the fuck?

Written and directed by Mark Herman ("Little Voice"), "Boy" follows German grade schooler Bruno (Asa Butterfield) as he moves just outside the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland with his family. There, daddy (David Thewlis) happily runs the camp, while mom (Vera Farmiga) is kept in the dark. Soon Bruno sees a "farm" behind the new house, with odd-looking people in "stripped pajamas" living there. Are you laughing yet? Bruno soon befriends one of the odd "farm" boys (Jack Scanlon) who's so sad behind a mysterious electric fence. Before long they're playing checkers. Cute, eh?

I have no doubt that the intentions behind this film are honest, but did anyone bother to ask why any parent would want to show his or her child a film about the Holocaust? Or why that fence remains unguarded all day for months, or why it's so easy for a child with no arm muscles to dig his way under the barrier unnoticed in minutes? The film's most grievous sin, though, is to reduce an entire murdered population to two pitiful characters with little voice and no resolve. Even the Nazis are cut-and-paste, including a bully youth straight out of "The Sound of Music." Taking a simplistic ABC After School Special view of the most heinous crime of the 20th century, "Boy" is the anti-"Night and Fog." The finale is heartbreaking for sure, but by then I was looking for the exit. D-