The Ending In keeping with the John Boyne novel, Bruno the child of an SS Commandant sneaks into the concentration camp at the rear of his house to help his Jewish friend Shmuel find his father. Tragically however, the two boys are ushered into a march with other inmates and are eventually told to strip before being forced into a gas chamber. In some of the least bareable scenes in recent cinema, the two boys clasp hands as a Nazi pours Zyklon B pellets into the death chamber. Brunos father, who has realised the danger, arrives at an empty dormitory and understands the fate that has befallen his child most viewers will come very close to feeling sorry for him. Depressing because Many people go into a film with the assumption that children are off-limits; they may be put in perilous situations but they will very seldom actually die. Taking this unrealistically optimistic stance would not make for a faithful Holocaust film though. Unequivocally the most depressing thing about The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas is that it contains the truth that over a million-and-a-half children were put to death during the Holocaust. A Silver Lining? Its a hard task finding a silver lining in something so intensely depressing. We can perhaps find solace in the fact that society has come a very long way in the 70-or-so years since the Holocaust.
Hailing from South East London, Sam Heard is an aspiring writer and recent graduate from the University of Warwick. Sam's favourite things include energy drinks, late nights spent watching the UFC with his girlfriend and annihilating his friends at FIFA.
