I want to see this film

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (or The Boy in the Striped Pajamas here in America.)

Watch the trailer.

It's a fictional story of the Holocaust told from the point of view of an 8-year-old son of Auschwitz' commandant. The boy forms a friendship with a boy his age who lives in the 'farm' at the end of the back garden, who always wears striped pyjamas. The ending is supposed to be extraordinary, although perhaps not to be viewed by young children.

I have always had a fascination for, and a great emotional connexion that I cannot really explain, for the Holocaust and for Judaism, even though I am not Jewish. I had no family involved. Perhaps it was a past life; I do not know. I feel very strongly about the telling of things that happened during that time, and after being drawn to it early by such works as Anne Frank's diary, I learnt what I could about genocide, in the Holocaust and in other times and places.

I've read many books, seen several films and plays, but I haven't read much true fiction on the subject, except some children's literature, and even the majority of those were fictionalised but based on real accounts. This film is based on a poignant book by the same name written by an Irish novelist, John Boyne.

It sounds like it will be tragic, yet a good 'end of innocence' piece that, as the trailer points out, can lead to the discovery of humanity. The only actor I recognise is David Thewlis, who played Remus Lupin in the movie adaptations of the Harry Potter series.

Its general release date for the US is next weekend. I'll have to check the paper to see where it is playing. It sounds like it might be something that the Kentucky might show. I watched Schindler's List there many years ago. It made the film seem even more real because I was sitting in an historic theatre that had shown films at the same time as the events of the movie. I'd like to see it there if at all possible.

Anyway, I thought I'd share.

I need to get up early in the morning to do a last-ditch effort to get my house clean before my landlords inspect it. I'm going to have to miss the game to do so, unfortunately. The kitchen's finished but nothing else is, and I've let the clutter pile up too much. I hate this tendency to hoard worthless stuff. Maybe it's just how I'm wired, that I attach an emotional 'safe' feeling if I can build up walls of stuff to keep people away from my personal space, and then get overwhelmed and it's so hard to tell what to get rid of during these periodic purges. Gods, I'm the Junk Lady from Labyrinth. :(

UPDATE 4/17/09:

I finally got to see the movie, although not in the theatre. It was very powerful and moving, a juxtaposition of innocence and horror. I did think the ending--which was a surprise--was contrived and not particularly believable, although it made for a very sad ending that brought it all home. I bawled, of course. I thought that it would somehow involve a death, but had no idea just how poetic a death it would be. Sometimes death comes without real warning, and that's the case for the characters involved. But for those of us watching, the horror builds for we do know the meaning behind the setting, and we know that for the story to be complete, a horrific thing would have to happen. In this film, nearly every life portrayed was destroyed in one way or another. The film focussed on life through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy, and presented details of German life during World War II that made it very real, with very little of the brutality we think of from similar films--although used sparingly, it is used well. There is a lot of subtlety in the film. A maid scrubbing a floor tells of death, a man's admiration for his father turns quickly into a sentence, an opposing view must be expressed privately and with caution. An interesting development in the film is that of the mother, who goes from dutiful soldier's wife who wilfully ignores a the signs to someone awoken to the true horror around her, and her awakening and the subsequent disintegration of her marriage play out slowly in the film. The pace of the film is slow by American standards, and involves very little action per se; I always find that rather refreshing myself. One needs plot, rather than explosions and special effects, for a decent movie. But the tale here was told via details and subtlety, and it works, even with such an improbable ending. It was well-worth seeing, and I will have to add it to my collection.