Saturday 6 July 2019

Children in Concentration Camps: a Filmic Survey

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)


(Note: I suppose I should include a spoiler warning here, but to be honest, anything that means you don't have to watch this is a blessing and you should thank me.)

But what if, right, what if it was a kid who wasn't Jewish that died in the Holocaust? What if a kid who wasn't supposed to died? Like one of your kids? Wouldn't that make you realise? Wouldn't you understand what you were doing then? Wouldn't that make you sorry?

Because if the state of the world tells us anything right now, it's not like we're able to feel anything for anyone else's children.

Feel the compassion. No, not compassion for the Jewish people, because they're the collateral damage of history, right? No, you have to feel, really feel for the family of the Nazi whose own kid accidentally gets gassed. Feel for him. Feel the sympathy. feel the sincerity.

Feel the all-consuming performative middlebrow middle-class smugness.

God, I hope the people who made this thing (and yeah, all right, that includes John Boyne, who wrote the book) are so proud of themselves.

That's all you get.

See also: The Reader (2008)