IF YOU mainly equate Disney with cuddly and fuzzy, then you are in for a shock if you settle down to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas expecting to leave the cinema with a warm glow. For while the film's title makes it sound like a cosy bedtime story, Mark Herman's (Brassed Off, Little Voice) brave drama, from Disney subsidiary Miramax, is ultimately the stuff of nightmares.
Though a tale of childhood set during the Holocaust, this is no Life is Beautiful. Where that film's mawkish coda offered the audience bogus consolation, the harrowing final few minutes of Herman's film rush us headlong into the infernal machinery of the Final Solution, to which the only responses can be silence, sorrow and tears.
Survivors' stories, or the stories of so-called righteous gentiles such as Oskar Schindler, may be uplifting and life-affirming, but they do not reflect the truth of the Holocaust: that most people perished. Irish author John Boyne's 2006 best-selling children's novella did not duck this truth, and neither does Herman's adaptation.
Though a tale of childhood set during the Holocaust, this is no Life is Beautiful. Where that film's mawkish coda offered the audience bogus consolation, the harrowing final few minutes of Herman's film rush us headlong into the infernal machinery of the Final Solution, to which the only responses can be silence, sorrow and tears.
Survivors' stories, or the stories of so-called righteous gentiles such as Oskar Schindler, may be uplifting and life-affirming, but they do not reflect the truth of the Holocaust: that most people perished. Irish author John Boyne's 2006 best-selling children's novella did not duck this truth, and neither does Herman's adaptation.
Read the full story at http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features/Disney39s-39The-Boy-in-the.4479755.jp
Copyright Stephen Applebaum, 2008
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