What Is The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas Book Vs Movie

For this assignment, I read and watched the heart-wrenching story, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. This story is considered historical fiction, because it is about a Nazi family living during the Holocaust, but the family is fictional. Bruno, the youngest in the family, is not happy to be moving away from their home in Berlin. They get to their new house, near Auschwitz, which Bruno calls “the farm” in the movie. He goes exploring outside of his year (strictly against his mothers rules) and finds a boy sitting on the other side of the fence. Schmuel lives in the concentration camp with his father. They are an unlikely friendship, but end up needing each other’s conversation to get through each day. The original story was written in 2006, in Ireland, spelling the title “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” due to the European spelling of the word. Two years later, Mark Herman directed the movie version of the story.
Literal Fidelity and Creative License
A great use of creative license used in this movie was when Bruno’s father showed a propaganda video of what the concentration camps were like.
This scene takes place in Father’s office, where he invites many of his officers over to watch this film. The film made concentration camps look like a fun place to be, where people were well fed and enjoyed playing with each other. Bruno stood on top of a chair outside the office, and watched the video through the window of his father’s office. This scene did not occur in the book; however, it added to the movie by providing a scenario that showed what the Nazi’s were presenting to the public at the time. After seeing this video, people assumed that Jews were being taken away to this lovely place. Some people believed the propaganda, but many knew the truth of the
situation.
Directorial Choices Film and books are completely different medias. In novels, the only limitation is not being able to find the words to describe a situation. In a movie, money, physics, space, actors and actresses, plus finding words to explain a situation, limit directors. Computer Generated Images (CGI) is changing the effects available in movie productions, but still costs money to do. Because of this, a director may make changes to the script to make it more feasible. This was not the case in this book (that I noticed). There were no situations that occurred in the story that would be impossible to happen in the natural world.
How Race, Age, Gender, and Ethnicity Affect Presentation No one will ever be able to completely understand all aspects of the Holocaust. However, as people learn more about it, movies and books will have to ability to be more accurate. When I read the book, I imagined Lieutenant Kolter to be much older than he actually was (19), which shows how young people were when they enlisted to be in the German military at the time. As for “race” the Jews in the concentration camps were stereotypical of the image that Nazis had of them. Large noses with everyone’s head shaved, which happened when they entered the camp.
Does the Director Make Changes for it to be More Suitable for Children? The end of the book does not give you a clear understanding of what happened, without inferring. This is a difficult skill to concur, and without it, students may have no clue what happens to close the story. If students have no prior knowledge of gas chambers in concentration camps, then they will lack complete understanding of the situation. In the movie, the ending is extended from what is provided in the book. First, Bruno’s family goes looking for him, and they find his clothes. This is where the book ends. The movie continues to show his family and the soldiers running around to look for him. The scenario ends as the camera pans out from the gas chamber. You see a soldier drop the gas into the room, and you hear people screaming. The screaming slowly dies down, until no one can be heard. Then the movie ends. Even though it is very depressing, it helps students to make the connection from Bruno going into the room with Schmuel, to them dying in the gas chamber.
Movie Versus Book Experience The movie stayed very true to the book. There were a few differences that the director chose to portray differently in the movie. In the book, Bruno referred to the concentration camp as “Out-With” misprouncing the actual name, Auschwitz. While reading the book, it took a while to catch on what he meant when he said “Out-With” because that was the only way the word was written. In the movie, Bruno referred to it as a farm. I imagine that the director chose to portray it that way to show the innocence of Bruno, and his mother.