And the award for the most misguided holocaust drama goes to . . . The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. This film is so 
misguided in its concept, it’s story, it’s motivations, and it’s message that it would have been a great consolation had the acting and production design also been poor. Sadly, though, David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga, and especially little Asa Butterfield and little Jack Scanlon (as the ill-fated friends) give earnest performances toward a film which is on the one hand too earnest and on the other absolutely thoughtless, if not pathologically misguided.
First of all, if you’re going to tell a story about a gritty, disgusting historical fact, like the Nazi work and death camps (apparently this one is both), then I say tell it with authenticity, in the German language and with a sense of German culture. This is a subject of constant debate: do you shoot it in English with German accents? I don’t think so, but that would have been better. What you don’t do is allow dialog like “You grandmother is poorly,” a phrase so idiosyncratically uppercrust Brit that it makes any attempt to immerse in the story impossible. And what you also don’t do is have the entertainment at the opening promotion party be British parlor music. These are the choices that make these British little boys and the British adults surrounding them a little too safe for a tale that is actually of a time and place that is not Brittain. (The actors could be Irish or Hungarian, for all I know, but they are all speaking the Queen’s English, as it were.) Apparently the novelist upon which this mockery is based is Irish, so perhaps that’s where the lack of authenticity started.
But I’m not being clear. The language issue is merely symptomatic of a much deeper problem. 
I’ll try to be vague and not spoil things for those set on seeing the film still, but the essence of the story is that an eight-year-old German (ehem) boy, who doesn’t understand the concept of the concentration camp his daddy runs, befriends an eight-year-0ld Jewish boy (who hails from, well, Britain, apparently) who lives in his pajamas on the other side of the electric fence surrounding the camp. After several episodes of blissful naiveté, eventually something truly terrible happens to the son of the Nazi camp director. And we’re meant to feel really, really terrible about it. Don’t mind the fact that this is set at a concentration camp, and that the boy (and for a while his mother) are ignorantly perplexed about the strange smell coming from the smokey chimneys. Don’t mind that score of people are dying every day. Didn’t you hear? Something terrible happened to the little German boy.
Unbelievable. That’s a good summation of both the story and the motivation of the novelist and the writer-director (who’s had good turns with Brassed Off and Little Voice) for telling it. Are we supposed to have learned something more about the camps? I don’t think so. You don’t need this film or it’s achingly serious closing shot to learn something about the horror of the concentration camps. Go re-watch Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog. (I say re-watch because that film is 32 minutes that everyone should be required to view.) So, if not the camps themselves, are we supposed to learn something more about the Nazi families who were part of the management of these monstrous facilities? I can’t see how. Despite his skilled efforts, Thewlis’ character — the good Dad, underneath it all, who is just going with the flow (or maybe not) — is utterly unconvincing. Farmiga’s mother character is slightly more believable, but rather than take an interest in her, the film doles cliched reactions like booze, depression, and impetuousness, in order to keep her character properly contained.
This film is a cowardly, formulaic, and trite attempt to attract attention (as in box office and awards). Looks like the effort was met with occasional success. I had to take a quick look around (which I rarely do) at the box office numbers and critical consensus. While some saw through this saccharine charade, it seems that quite a few displayed less discernment. And my fellow Chicagoans, I am ashamed to say, gave the film an audience award at last year’s film festival. The award was a tie with Slumdog Millionaire, a film that, on the surface at least, bears some similarities with Striped Pajamas. I guess we’re just too nice here in the Midwest to turn a cynical eye toward a holocaust film with adorable little boys with their adorable British accents. Except for me. So on behalf of the overly enthusiastic and now repentant Chicago cinema audience, might I respectfully say, take your faux Nazi story and calculated sentimentality and sod off!
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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