by Kevin Cole

Created on: February 13, 2009

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is held every January 27th. The day often re-ignites discussions over what should be done with the defunct Nazi death camps: should Auschwitz and Dachau be left to rot, reclaimed by nature, or actively maintained as a memorial to victims of the Holocaust? Survivors, whose opinions here should trump all, have weighed in both sides of the debate.

It's not hard, however, to imagine which side Hollywood comes down on, given its perpetual fascination with mining others' tragedies for financial profit. A virtual deluge of Holocaust films at the end of 2008 has re-ignited another continued debate: what right do privileged bourgeoisie have to exploit unspeakable genocide for box office (and Academy Award) success?

Two recent movies, "The Reader" and "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," particularly bring this question to the forefront. Both are deeply indebted to past Holocaust films, especially 1982's "Sophie's Choice," but with a disturbing twist: Nazis and Germans, not Third Reich victims, are played for sympathy.

"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is particularly egregious in this regard. David Thewlis plays a Nazi officer who is transferring to a new job as commander of a concentration camp. In the process he must move his nave wife (Vera Farmiga) and children who all must, to some degree or another, come to grips with what their father does for a living. Expectedly, precocious eight-year-old Bruno is completely baffled about the "farm" next door to their staid house. He eventually comes to befriend a Jewish boy on the other side of the barbed-wire fence and together they learn sappy life lessons (meaning of true friendship, our shared humanity, etc ad nauseam).

The film builds to a perverse climax, replete with swelling orchestral score, that, while technically showing nothing gruesome, is so macabre in suggestion that it is nigh-unwatchable. It's morally and aesthetically offensive because the scene is in service of a fraud. The entire film is rife with bizarre unrealities that expose The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as manipulative Oscar bait. We have, for example, a death camp with less security than a shopping mall, and an American actress playing a German mother who speaks English with a British accent; a mother, we should note, who is so daft that living right next to extermination ovens is not enough to clue her in to the fact that her husband's job requires killing people.

While "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" aims to be gutter-level

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>