War through the eyes of a child of a German officer. The film "Boy in striped pajamas"
The main character of the picture is an eight-year-old German boy named Bruno. Since we see the whole picture through the eyes of a child, we understand that the boy does not know the whole truth about what is happening. To better understand the message of the author of the book, John Boyne, based on which the film "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" was filmed, and to more clearly perceive the characters of the heroes, let's see the picture through the prism of the knowledge of the training "System Vector Psychology" …
History is part of our life, and war is part of our history. Every year on June 22, the day of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, and on May 9, on Victory Day, we involuntarily mentally return to the terrible events of those years.
As a rule, fresh film adaptations and new films about the war are released on TV screens every year. There are many of them, they are about different things and at the same time about one thing. About one grief for all. They are about pain and love, cruelty and tenderness, injustice and retribution, friendship and betrayal. And when we talk about war, we often think that this is the business of adults. However, everyone has to suffer, including children.
The naive children of war, believing only in good things, faced a completely different reality. Deprived of childhood, weak and defenseless, they had to grow up quickly.
The need for protection and security in a war is increasing hundreds of times. Friendship gains special strength and devotion. A sincere desire to come to the aid of a comrade helps out many children in wartime. A close emotional bond between friends becomes a guarantor of a sense of security and survival in a brutal war period. A child sees no barriers to friendship if it is from the bottom of his heart. Nationality and material status do not matter to him. Such a story of childhood friendship in wartime, sincere and tragic, is shown in the film "Boy in Striped Pajamas".
“In the life of a soldier, there is rarely a choice. The most important thing for him is duty"
The main character of the picture is an eight-year-old German boy named Bruno. He lives with his parents and older sister Gretel in a large Berlin house. Bruno is quite happy, he goes to school, plays airplanes with friends, often sees his grandparents. One day, his father Ralph informs the family about the imminent move. The important work of the father, namely the new position of the commandant of the concentration camp, forces them to move to a remote place far from their usual and happy life in the capital.
The very first shots of the film do not even hint to the viewer about the war in Germany. But it's 1944, the very height of World War II. Director Mark Herman deliberately shows the external calmness and ease of military Berlin, so that in the future we will see a sharp contrast between the life of the Germans and the prisoners of the concentration camp.
Speaking your thoughts out loud can be dangerous
Since we see the whole picture through the eyes of a child, we understand that the boy does not know the whole truth about what is happening. He takes the concentration camp for a farm and is sure that the "people in striped pajamas" are engaged in farming and relaxing in the fresh air. We also see that not even all adults in Germany at that time fully realized the cruelty and mercilessness of Nazi politics. Competently filmed films about the life of Jews in the camp falsely described the comfortable and cheerful life of the prisoners.
The creation of political myths has always been used throughout history to contain citizen discontent. So, Bruno's mother, a dreamy, slender woman, immersed mainly in cares for the comfort and beauty in the house, was shocked to learn that in the huge furnaces of the concentration camp they burn not garbage, but the bodies of murdered Jews. Disappointed in the correctness of the actions and beliefs of her husband, hating the place where they had to move, she begins to drink in order to drown out the feeling of guilt and rejection of fascism at least for a moment, to escape from the horror of what is happening, to pretend that this does not concern her.
To better understand the message of the author of the book, John Boyne, based on which the film "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" was filmed, and to better perceive the characters of the heroes, let's look at the picture through the prism of the knowledge of the training "System Vector Psychology".
It's funny that adults can't figure out what exactly they want to do
Boy Bruno is the owner of the visual vector. He does not sit still, he is curious, keen on exploring the world around him. Such children are sociable, kind, sincere. Bruno loves to read, especially books about pirates, knights, exploits. But after the adventure book moved, he is banned by a new teacher who gives private lessons and promotes only history literature, telling day after day that Jews are evil. He misses home alone, almost never plays with his older sister Gretel, who is carried away by fascist ideology. The girl feels like an ardent patriot and one day throws all the dolls into the basement, covering the room with posters of Hitler. This three-second scene of a mountain of naked dolls in the basement, the viewer associates with thousands of people who were experimented on, tortured and brutally killed in concentration camps.
Let's return to our hero, who hoped to live in a new house for only a couple of weeks, but in the end stayed there forever. The “farm” that he sees from the window every day haunts him. Not feeling a strong emotional connection with the skin-visual mother, left without communication with peers, Bruno is simply forced to find friends. He watches adults and guys in the same clothes and decides to walk to the farm and get to know them. After all, it will be so great for them to play together! Having thought out a plan to "escape" through the backyard, Bruno manages to make his first exploratory journey towards the concentration camp. The barbed wire and the constant screams of the military do not make the child think that these people are prisoners. He thinks the numbers on striped clothes, shouts, dogs outside the fence are part of the game.
Approaching the fence, he sees a lonely Jewish boy Shmuel. The guys quickly find a common language, the new friendship inspires Bruno. He carries sandwiches to his friend, they play checkers through the bars, throw the ball. Life in a new place is getting better, and Bruno no longer misses Berlin. Once, when asked why Shmuel does not live at home with his family, but behind barbed wire, the boy replies that he is just a Jew. Bruno cannot understand why this fact immediately makes him a bad person.
In the movie "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" each character is interesting. Not a single character appears in the picture just like that. The Jewish kitchen worker is a former doctor who provided first aid to Bruno when the boy fell off a swing. This sound-visual old man in a short dialogue speaks very deep words that make a great impression on the child. "If someone looks at the sky at night, that does not mean that we are dealing with an astronomer." It is at this moment that Bruno realizes that sometimes people do something against their will and often in reality they turn out to be completely different people.
Bruno is still a child, he lives in a childish world from books about knights and adventure. He cries when his father doesn't intercede for a Jew who is beaten by Lieutenant Kurt. After all, he used to be so proud of his father - "a real soldier." He feels that something bad is happening when the grandmother, who does not approve of her son's beliefs, does not come to visit them, when he hears his parents quarrel. But his child's psyche opposes what he cannot yet comprehend and bear. After watching a propaganda film about the wonderful life of Jews in the camp, he happily hugs his father: after all, he can again be proud of him. His childish, naive perception of the world resists harshness and injustice.
One day our hero unexpectedly meets Shmuel at his place. An exhausted Jewish toddler was brought to the commandant's house to clean dishes that needed to be prepared for an important dinner. His thin fingers seemed to Lieutenant Kurt ideal for rubbing small glasses. Bruno, already faced with incomprehensible prohibitions to go outside the yard and the fact that adults treat Jews badly, realizes that his family should not know about his friendship with a Jewish boy yet. He lies to the lieutenant when he, suspecting something, asks Bruno if he knows Shmuel. Without giving away his comrade, Shmuel returns to the camp, where he is severely beaten.
A sense of guilt makes Bruno apologize to his comrade, he is ashamed of a minute of weakness and fear of the lieutenant. Wanting to help in some way, Bruno agrees to go in search of Shmuel's father, who recently disappeared in a concentration camp. On the day of the planned departure, Bruno runs away from home early in order to complete the work he has begun. After all, he promised to help a friend.
Childhood is filled with sounds, smells, sights until the dark hour of comprehension arises
Having carefully folded his clothes by the fence, having made a shallow tunnel, he puts on an old, unpleasant "pajamas". At one point, Bruno becomes one of the prisoners. Once behind the fence, he begins to understand that the concentration camp in reality is very different from the shots that he saw on his father's film. There is hunger, poverty, disease, suffering, pain and death. He wants to return home, to escape from this nightmare, but nothing can be changed. With horror, the viewer realizes that the boy is not even aware of his fate. At this moment, there are no words in the picture, only a gas chamber and the tightly gripped hands of two friends who are about to disappear for everyone else forever.
The boy's disappearance is not immediately discovered. A detachment of German soldiers finds a path that has connected Bruno with his comrade for weeks. The folded things lying next to the barbed wire open our eyes to everything that happened. But nothing can be fixed.
It is impossible to isolate oneself from the world with a high fence and guards, a smile on duty, a book, or illusions. It is impossible to say: “I don’t watch the news because it’s too hard”, “I don’t care what happened in that war, now is another time”, “this is your life, and this is mine, and nothing concerns me”, “me don't care about politics. The outside world with its joys, with its problems will still overtake and burst into our lives.
Just as it happened with Commandant Ralph. He designed gas chambers for the extermination of Jews and lost his beloved son in one of them. It is impossible to build a happy life in a single luxury home, separated by a fence from the suffering of others.
Just like it happened with Elsa, who was hiding from the unsightly side of life, first in worries about a beautiful interior, then in alcohol, then in silent non-resistance to Nazism and her husband's work. She began to lose her son much earlier than that ill-fated day. Her bad states were mirrored on the child, so he sought a sense of security through communication with the kind and defenseless Shmuel. The guards and prohibitions did not save her little Bruno.
It is impossible to preserve and make happy the life of an individual, your child, by destroying or remaining indifferent to the fate of other children. After all, we do not live alone. This is the reality. Otherwise, we will remain in front of us, as in front of the heroes of the film, an empty corridor, “striped pajamas” on a hook and an iron door to the gas chamber, in which our common future is suffocated.
