The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

The Film
"If the intellect is the soul’s navigator, the will is its captain. A wise captain listens to his navigator, but it is the captain who is in charge and ultimately responsible for the ship." (Dr. Peter Kreeft). When reflecting on the Holocaust, any honest person, at some point, asks himself, "What would I do? Would I even know?" Truth is a Person—a Person with whom each of us has a relationship. If we love Truth with our will (or heart, i.e. our center), we will find it with our mind (either in this life or the next). Conversely, we humans are capable of self-deception, of fundamentally opting for the lie instead of the truth. Think about that for a moment: the human person is so complex that he can lie to himself...and believe it! Perhaps that's why Christ said that we must become like little children if we are to gain Heaven—because children are fundamentally honest, whereas we adults are clever enough to hide the truth from ourselves. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a powerful parable-like story of a family—of each of its members' relationship with truth during a time when finding the truth was difficult and affirming it was dangerous. Told from the perspective of the wide-open, honest, and inquiring mind of a child (whose father is a Nazi officer), the film is a unique treatment of the spiritual and intellectual elements which where pressing on the common man—especially during his innocent and impressionable childhood—at one of the most evil times in human history. What goes on inside the mind of a child when the adults in his life, through the use of euphemism and denial, depict evil as though it were normal? Many haunting parallels can be drawn to how our present culture's children come to believe what they do about our own holocaust of pre-born people.

The Critics
"Boyne's accomplishment is to establish the uncomfortable truth that Nazis were people, too, with wives, children to raise and bills to pay. All it took for the tide of evil to sweep over Europe was for otherwise reasonable people to disregard the big picture, swallow the delusions of propaganda and focus on their own day-to-day survival."
—Phil Villarreal

"It’s the rare film that so slyly and so completely manages to knock you out of your comfort zone like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas does. It’s not merely that it creates a unique perspective on a moment in time that we haven’t seen before, though it does do that fantastically well. It’s that, at the same time, it sneakily challenges us to consider how much of what we take for granted in our own lives are things we’re not seeing, and should."
—Maryann Johanson

"One of the clichés in studying the Holocaust is to ask how Germans were able to murder and commit atrocities while working at the death camps, and then go home, as if from a regular job, and have dinner with their families and play with their children. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," turns that notion on its head. What must have it been like to be one of those children?. . . The movie doesn't shock with horrific images, nor does it dwell on the cruelty. Instead it shows how seemingly normal people are capable of great evil. The result proves to be ultimate example of a "loss of innocence" story. While appropriate for teen viewers, it isn't for children. If your kids are old enough to understand the reality of the historical event, then they should be able to handle this."
—Daniel M. Kimmel

The Audience
While there is no graphic violence, it is graphically implied in one scene where it is heard but not seen. Your child may be ready to see this film if he has already grappled with the basic reality of the Holocaust and can endure an emotionally haunting (albeit, non-graphic) depiction of it. If so, it is an inspiring springboard to discussion about the human person's relationship to truth. Take your teen to see it and then afterward to a comfy place to sip warm caffeinated beverages and discuss the nature of self-deception and how one can know if he knows the truth.

The Links
-Trailer
-Official website
-IMDb
-Rotten Tomatoes
-Wikipedia
-Book on which the film is based
-Jennifer F. asks, "If were a 31-year-old woman with three little kids in a busy house in Germany 1941, would I...?