Avalon

Death is the next adventure

Monday, March 09, 2009

Life is full of the unexpected, like catching a movie you never really meant to catch simply because it fits the movie timing you desired. "The Boy in Striped Pajamas" is just one unplanned catch, albeit a good one. Spoiler note.

Nazi Germany. The Holocaust. Preconceptions developed after watching "Valkyrie" came flooding back. But this time, the plot centres around a young boy, 'privileged' by his German identity and family background, where his father is a high-ranking official of the German Army. The events happening around him is witnessed from his very eyes and from his perspective, the turmoil, unfairness, cruelty, unrest and harshness of this particularly dark age in German history is slowly unravelled in front of the audience.

The boy's father gets located near a concentration camp to supervise the proceedings, and this deployment could be seen as an arrangement by fate for the boy to 'open his eyes.' He is a wanderer, an explorer, all the way to the end. Unknowingly, he is trying to uncover all the unjustified and ugly truths being intentionally hidden from him. Alone and brimming with curiosity, he attempts to make sense of his situation and environment, after seeing the German concentration camp situated just a distance away from the comfort of his own home, discovering the real identities of those "farmers" ploughing at the fields or slaving under the sun clad in pajamas, and eventually getting to befriend a young Jewish boy of the same age as him, but placed in situations of extreme polarities.

The closer he gets to the truth, the more he doesn't understand. Why the camp seems to look so different from the documentary that his father is in charge of making? Why his tutor tells him that "there is no such thing as a nice Jew" when he could so readily think of one. (his new found friend)

What I found particularly touching was the friendship that blossomed between the German boy and the Jewish inmate. Having been indoctrinated that they are supposed to be 'enemies', the German boy still made it his daily routine to go through the backdoor of his house, bypass the forest and traipse down to the barbed wire fences outlining the camp, where he will wait to meet his 'friend', the two of them separated by the a row of towering fences, by a line of difference, by a distinction in positions dictated by the times they are in. But this friendship is not unchallenged, such as when the boy was confronted by a German soldier working for his father who demanded him to answer if he knew the Jewish inmate who was found talking to him in his house when the latter was ordered there to doing some cleaning. Fear overwhelmed him and he was emotionally threatened to weakly deny any knowledge of the Jewish inmate's existence. In the same way, Germans of that time might have been similarly coerced into denying the existence of Jews and devoid of any personal sentiment or free will. But the German boy had his own emotional struggle, pricked by his guilt and haunted by his betrayal. It was with huge resolve that he once again went back to meet the Jewish boy, and it was momentarily touching when the Jewish boy offered him a childlike forgiveness uncommon amongst the grownups that surrounded them, with the two of them exchanging smiles while framed by the afternoon sun. Simple, but impactful.

The director really went out of his way making sure that the audience each leaves with a few take-home messages. The use of multifarious signs is efficacious on the whole, a good example being the scene where all the used and naked dolls owned by the German boy's sister were being carted away and randomly piled up in the dark corners of the storeroom, a foreshadowing of gloom.

In facing his end without any knowledge of the impending doom just quantifies the tragedy and at the same time, made good his promise of helping to find the Jewish boy's father, who most probably died in the gas chamber. (which made him sneak into the camp and eventually led him to his death, hence joining him in death..)

In death, he was in a way freed from all the propaganda and thought imposition forcefully inflicted on him. It can be argued that he retained that innocence and purity untainted by the promulgation. Once again therein lies the notion that those harmed in war are normally not the parties involved but the innocent and those not in the know. Yet another moral of the story for children who happen to watch this show might be: curiosity killed the cat.

Envoy of the Stars @ 12:48 AM
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