CriticSociety- film reviews

Review

Going My Way

Director

Leo McCarey

Year

1944

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Friday, January 30, 2009

The fact that the only atheist in the movie is portrayed as a bitter old man at the very beginning could have discouraged me (an atheist myself) from watching this but even that soon I could feel the heart of the piece and be inevitably drawn to it. I’ve been fascinated with it ever since. How is it possible for a film about a Catholic priest to be so universally praised and loved? What with all the cynicism in the world and all.

Many of the characters represent these varied points of view I guess, and that’s probably the reason; no one is exempt from the effect of a good heartwarming and that has very little to do with particular beliefs or religions. Set in a church and starring a priest, this is a story about human nature at its best.

The protagonist is Father Chuck O’Malley, memorably played by Bing Crosby in his most famous role. O’Malley is a good-doer if there ever was one, a talented, good-looking man who gave up his artistic ambitions for the sake of his spiritual journey. Now quite the respected churchman, he’s assigned the job of taking over the New York St. Dominic’s church, whose current pastor, old Father Fitzgibbon, can’t control the mortgage and other troubles of the community, including youth delinquency.

Most of the plot revolves around Fitzgibbon’s realization that he’s not quite what he used to be and that he must let someone else take charge. Barry Fitzgerald is unforgettable as the old priest.

There’s much more going on in the story though, including the way O’Malley takes care of the gang of young derelicts by showing them a new path of redemption through music, forming a chorus. This being, after all, a Crosby vehicle (one way or the other, meaning that it was probably not constituted as such but became one), music forms an integral part of the story, and it’s through it that we’re mostly touched.

Just to delve into it, let’s reminisce some of the musical numbers that are used as plot devices: when the boys sing a playful song and Father Fitzgibbon hears it and figures Father O’Malley isn’t taking things seriously, he decides to take some extreme measures; when O’Malley finds out that the aspiring singer runaway that he coached (Jean Heather) is causing the landlord’s son, who’s in love with her, to be unfair with other people in the building, he sings the title song and changes the young couple’s hearts; and when he fails to take this song to another level by selling it to record executives, the kids propose that they sing “Swinging on a Star”, the fun tune nicknmaed “The Mule” which unexpectedly and brilliantly turns out to be the definitive song of the movie, the one that moves mountains.

With music by Jimmy Van Heusen and lyrics by Johnny Burke, the songs are outstanding.

The film moves fast and is never as boring as church, but in fact, a perfect representation of what’s good about religion, when it focuses on enlightening people’s lives. It’s a bombastic, entertaining piece by one of the finest filmmakers in Hollywood history, and one of the few who would dare make a film like this, and turn it into one of the greatest box office successes: Leo McCarey.

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Review

Che: Part One

Director

Steven Soderbergh

Year

2008

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Isn’t it amazing how Che Guevara is such an icon for so many of us? So many people condemn Fidel Castro and don’t realize that Che was the same sort, even though his personality was different and he was better looking and had such iconoclast features that were photographed memorably in what went on to become, according to some, the most famous photograph in history (that of Alberto Korda).

Because we should at least know who the hell he was, I’m happy that his popularity is rising lately in the movies, and you couldn’t ask for much more than the recent biopic of Steven Soderbergh whose first half has been released standalone and is pretty great. Much as I knew about Che, I was surprised to find out some stuff about him, and found it all to be mesmerizing.

History is re-told from the moment when young Ernesto Guevara met Fidel Castro in Mexico City and joined the revolutionary initiative for Cuba. It’s poignant to see Guevara’s idealism while joining what he could only suspect would become so huge and long-lasting. This section benefits from the contrast created by flash-forward documentary-style scenes of an older Guevara conceding an interview, complete with long hair, beard, cigar and beret. The rest is a different story.

After Fidel, Che, and the gang take off, the astonishing portrayal of their struggles looks so real you can nearly touch it. After a while, I really felt like I was there, and that doesn’t happen to me often. Then I unfortunately kept being reminded that I was not, courtesy of the eventually annoying flash-forwards to the interview and to a memorable UN Assembly where he participated, which not only slow down the action and give the film a documentary style but also, and this is much worse, remind us that no matter what happens during what we’re watching, Che will become a very big figure.

I mean, we all know how this will end, more or less, but you know the drill in good historical movies, which really make you concerned or excited that history just might change or is shaping up, the way things are looking… That the effect is lost because of the constant reality checks truly marred the biopic experience for me; I would’ve preferred to see Ernesto become Che, not already be him and remember how he came to be.

And because that’s out of my system, I can continue praising what is good, and there’s a lot of it. The gritty realism, photographed by Soderbergh himself (as Peter Andrews), is truly awe-inspiring. Filmed in Mexico, we’re really transported to Cuba, we can live the guerrilla and the takeover of small towns, as well as the big struggle of the revolutionaries and their foes.

Living the experience first-hand, emotionally amplified by Alberto Iglesias’s score, we can finally understand what went on in the minds of these people. It’s funny how after a while we don’t really remember that they’re Marxists that the western world has come to repudiate, because from their point of view, they’re doing what they must. At least that’s how it is for Che; for Fidel, that likable mastermind bastard, it might be a game of power… who knows, this film isn’t about him.

The two main performers, Benicio del Toro as Che and Demián Bichir as Fidel, are outstanding, particularly the lead, who finally perfected his Spanish and never appears to be anyone else but Che, from younger to older, impressively characterized. Catalina Sandino Moreno is also notable in a significant role.

Now we’ll have to wait and see how the second half is; I really hope it’s victorious.

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Review

RocknRolla

Director

Guy Ritchie

Year

2008

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The title refers to rocker Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell), who’s one step away from the point of no return: he just can’t have enough. He is, in fact, only one of many pivotal elements of a story that, when looking at its writer/director’s work from the past, reminisces Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) more than Snatch. (2000) because, while as fun and energetic as either, it’s rather trivial and lacks the haunting feeling of the latter and most masterful of Ritchie’s flicks.

That’s not to say it’s not bombastic, because it is, but one wonders after so many spins what the point is if any. We get that British lowlifes can be as involuntarily funny as anyone and that the convolutions of life can often lead to unmistakably hilarious crossroads that are no fun for those who live them, but plenty for those who watch them, but so what. There’s a very low point in the middle when all of the stories have kicked off and seem to go nowhere. I think I may have dozed off for a few seconds there, but soon enough it went off and upwards. I quite enjoyed the denouement, but couldn’t get over the rather painstaking first half.

The stories are, as ever, a bunch of excuses to poke fun at tough guys stuck in Catch-22’s despite their power or abilities. Even after more than ten years, one can’t help but be melancholically reminded of the best ever example of this in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994).

The official trigger is the unwise decision of One-Two (Gerard Butler) and Mumbles (Idris Elba) to try to get a business started with the help of the mob tycoon Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson). Lenny, who controls everything, screws them bad and now they owe him big bucks that they set to acquire wherever possible.

Out of control, Lenny, who pulls strings virtually everywhere to control virtually everything, as has been for many years, only finds his match in Russian millionaire Uri (Karel Roden), who buys his influence and lends him his “lucky painting”. The painting, one of those cinematic artifices that is never seen but awes everyone and means the world to some characters, is subsequently stolen and complicates the deal, driving Uri to prove how powerful he really is. That such futilities provoke such great consequences is not always plausible, so suspension of disbelief is required, which doesn’t really come easy every time.

The struggle between Lenny and Uri is the most entertaining element of the story because of everything it unwinds, including Lenny’s forced reconciliation with his estranged stepson, the RocknRolla, Johnny Quid. Meanwhile, One-Two and Mumbles get into so much trouble to get their money, in great part encouraged by bored and horny accountant Stella (Thandie Newton), that their segments become even slapsticky. It’s all in good fun, and with an array of impossibly-named characters perfectly cast, a bald Tom Wilkinson being the standout, one can’t really complain about RocknRolla… or call it memorable.

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Review

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Director

David Fincher

Year

2008

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Monday, January 19, 2009

Curious indeed, the case of a man who’s born old and instead of aging rejuvenates. So much can be done of that. It’s intriguing, to begin with. I never expected the film to explain it. Why, after all, can a man be born old and rejuvenate until his death as a baby. Any explanation would be superfluous and immediately invalidated by any rules of logic. If this story is to work, it has to be as a fable, as a self-admitted fantasy with the sole purpose of telling a tale with that extraordinary premise and make something original of it. It is, as with any story, quite a valid artifice and one I was willing to play ball with. Impossible task, I sadly found it to be.

That is because the film is not at all about this extraordinary case. What I mean is, it pretends to be, but it’s really not. The film is presented in a pompous but I have to admit very beautiful coating of exquisite photography (Claudio Miranda), beautiful music (Alexandre Desplat), stunning makeup and production design and faultless if lifeless performances (I’ll elaborate on this last token later on). Yet, the story is not at all haunting after it has been established that Benjamin Button, a child born with normal size but horrible afflictions that usually pertain to the old age, raised, ironically, in a nursing home for the elder, is in fact no different to any other children, at least psychologically speaking, because when it comes to his physique he’s quite the opposite: his development is in reverse.

Benjamin is, thus, the luckiest of all men who have been on this planet in regards to his health: he’s got afflictions aplenty when born and finds a natural cure in his grown that only augments his capacities and vitality and leaves a trail of incapacities in the past. Though his mother died at childbirth and his father neglected him, Benjamin finds a loving adoptive mama in Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), a character so poorly developed she just fills a requisite for the story, giving ol’ Ben so much love he hardly even notices his situation because he’s so strong-willed and sure of himself thanks to that lady.

Some of this is so similar to Forrest Gump (1994) it figures that the scripter of both is the same, Eric Roth, who this time borrowed the original story from an F. Scott Fitzgerald short and expanded it into full length with his (I figure) trademark elements of unconditional love and lack of fear for the unexpected giving an otherwise outcast enough tools to face the world and become a champion in it.

Only Button is no Gump and we can see he’s smart enough to know what he’s doing, so, even though some of his antics are exciting, we’re never much into him because he pretty much has the same choices that we all have; he makes something of some, nothing of others, and that’s the way it goes for all of us. When he finally has a choice, as we all do, to settle, he does so with his life-long love Daisy (Cate Blanchett), and soon enough and quite cowardly decides that because of his peculiar situation he can’t go on with it. What? He’s got a midlife crisis is what he’s got, similar to that of the guys who find their fortune at 50 and decide that they should buy a Ferrari like they always wanted, and who the hell cares about their children, let the good wife raise them, he’s busy enough making bucks and enjoying them!

So I propose this: strip the “enchanting” story from the extraordinary premise and all you’ve got is the story of a real bastard who uses his best excuse to avoid responsibility and live his bachelor life to its fullest. Even Brad Pitt can’t pull that off without some of us noticing the scam. And that’s what I said earlier that I would delve upon: Pitt and Blanchett are excellent… But their roles are nothing really unconventional. I’ll tell you who’s a standout: Tilda Swinton in a rather bittersweet segment that by the way could be in any movie and isn’t made special by the aging situation either.

Postscript: I only unfortunately realized after the film was over that the script was based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. I was already infuriated so I had to look that up and you can already expect my nerdy statement that the story is much better over there, so I’ll skip that. I’ll just say that Fitzgerald was wise enough to give his character a personality and psychology that agreed with his physical age at every stage. That worked! The film just makes Benjamin immature for no reason. Another old man who looked young and acted it just for the hell of it comes to mind: Twilight (2008)’s Edward Cullen.

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Review

Seven Pounds

Director

Gabriele Muccino

Year

2008

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

What a disgraceful fraud, Seven Pounds: a movie that so distrusts its own plot that it has to dismember it in such a way that it’s incomprehensible for the most part until a final plot twist gives the thing some coherence. I expect plot twists for a fairly entertaining story that becomes stunning through a final revelation, or a tale that seems to be something powerful on its own and becomes something completely different after the wind changes in the end. It’s a beautiful narrative artifice that has worked in literature and cinema through the ages and there’s just nothing wrong with that, it’s not a cheat, as long as the story doesn’t work because of it but partly thanks to it, you know.

Let’s take the most famous recent example, though it’s already 10 years old: The Sixth Sense (1999). Even though word-of-mouth talked of a plot twist, most of us were as happy as could be when the finale was close because the story arc of the kid had been fully satisfied, and he was the protagonist; but when a shattering revelation about the co-protagonist, children psychologist Malcolm Crowe, came upon, the story became outstanding far beyond. It was not all about the plot twist; there was a meaty story with enough thrills to keep us on the edge of our seats as it was, the twist only adding an extra layer that was related to the overall theme and made it infinitely more powerful.

Let’s make the case of Seven Pounds clear, spoiler-free: Will Smith plays Ben Thomas, an IRS agent who first suggests he’ll kill himself, then harasses a blind man (Woody Harrelson) over the phone, then stalks debtors way beyond the limits of his position, all of this while he’s tormented by incoherent flashbacks involving a car crash and a loving wife he’s no longer with. Inexplicably, the man has become an IRS agent after holding a powerful position in a seemingly grade-A company, has moved into a cheap motel indefinitely and, dressed in a saddening gray suit and black tie, follows around debtors who are near death.

Who or what is this guy? Smith gives him sufficient depth but we have no clue what this depth means… Is he morbidly obsessed with death? Is he dying and in need of relating with people who share his fate? Is he a psychopath who thinks he’s a guardian angel but is in fact an exterminating one? One thing’s for certain: he’s got a hidden agenda, his motives are related to something horrible, and he behaves in a way that almost seems cruel for all the good that he apparently thinks he’s doing. I was convinced all throughout that he was a wacko, I was worried for the people he interacted with, and all in all I was more in a hurry for the thing to finish than for it to explain itself, which it eventually did.

Among the ill/delinquent people Ben pursues, there’s a weak-hearted but glowing girl called Emily (Rosario Dawson, in an excellent performance) who owns a Great Dane that Ben feeds meat though she keeps the dog in a vegetarian diet. Despite the bad start, and the fact that he’s an IRS agent, the sort that everyone hates, she falls for him, as he apparently does for her, but doesn’t quite show it. Does he hide the secret that he kills everything he loves? Does he secretly hate her for a reason from the past and finds his love for her conflicting? Is she responsible for something horrible that happened to him? Does he want to see her dead and struggles to stay around until it happens? What’s going on?

The filmmakers don’t worry about our questions: they treat this love story as though we know it’s a beautiful thing, complete with romantic music by Angelo Milli and a few scenes in a park where they laugh and have a good time like an old-fashioned movie couple in love. Only instead of enjoying these scenes, we find them gut-wrenching. (I’m presuming most of us do, but let me not be that presumptuous and state that at least I know I do.)

By the time they quickly revealed what it all was about, I wanted to strike them in the face. It made sense, of course, all of it did, but was it really worth going through so much pain and confusion for that kind of payoff? Was it necessary to make us suffer as much as the protagonist? I don’t think so. Besides, the revelation wasn’t all that great or intriguing; it was rather proof that Grant Nieporte didn’t trust his own idea enough to play it in a more conventional way, and decided that making it incomprehensible for most of the running time, with a final twist to piece it all together, was a better idea. He found his script’s way to Hollywood for sure, but I think he cheated. And I, for one, don’t like to be cheated.

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Review

Nixon

Director

Oliver Stone

Year

1995

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Monday, January 12, 2009

President Richard Nixon is a controversial figure if there ever was one in the history of the United States of America and the perfect example of a man who goes out in shame and sees his whole image retroactively marred for good. Even though he was never the most charismatic or best-loved of all politicians, he struggled and found his way up to the White House and it’s a shame that his merits are hardly remembered.

Oliver Stone’s take on Nixon’s presidency, co-scripted by himself and Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson, is unflattering to say the least, and panned by some for that reason, but it’s truthful at least in one way: there’s so much a man can do to control the fate of a country where so many interests intertwine, sometimes in a completely colliding way. Instead of Nixon, the film should probably be called Nixon’s Presidency, after all, all it does is focus on that and use some of the man’s background as an explanation of his role in that most important of all political posts of the country.

The movie is overlong and quite detailed but not in a way that makes it simpler; it rather assumes the viewer knows and understands every historical detail that surrounded Nixon’s presidency, including the Watergate scandal, and wants only to crave into the unknown and the possibilities and hearsay. Not so. I for one know the story quite well and still had trouble following up. If there’s anything worse than boredom, that’s incomprehension, and I was the victim of that here and there.

What Stone proposes is Nixon was haunted by the ghosts of his mother’s (Mary Steenburgen) religious fervency, his two brothers’ deaths that allowed him to go to Law School, the shadow of Jack Kennedy who once defeated him for the presidency and then went on to die violently becoming a national martyr (and hero), and his overall insecurities that were step by step overpowered by his strength and the support of all those around him: from his loving wife to his faithful aides to his strong supporters.

What Stone adds in an exercise of creative liberty is some of the background: Bob Haldeman (James Woods), the president’s his chief of staff, mocks him every once and again behind his back though he truly supports and helps him in every way he can; J. Edgar Hoover (Bob Hoskins) mercilessly buffaloes Nixon to play ball; powerful businessmen such as the tycoon Jack Jones (Larry Hagman) do more than is apparent to put him in office… for a price; etc. The script shies away, as expected, from actually declaring these things by, let’s say, adding a scene that ties any of these knots. Yet, the suggestion is there for those who will take it. And some are quite willing, while others are indignant.

I was so fascinated by Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of Nixon that I could hardly consider all the controversy though. Not that I minded, anyway, because I know that’s the style of Oliver Stone and I’m way past considering it outrageous. I do suppose that whoever is affected by it, like, let’s say, Nixon’s daughters, who condemned it, I am told, have good reason to be mad. I wouldn’t do much about it though, let Stone say whatever he wants, denouncing the film only gives it publicity, but that’s just me. As I was saying, the casting of Hopkins is gifted; don’t know where that came from. Watching Nixon’s real speeches I realized their voices are rather similar, but still, who thought of that? Someone who completely trusted in Hopkins’ talent, that’s for sure, and of course, the man proved them right: he’s incredible in every mannerism, pause and twitch. He’s Nixon, not Hopkins, all throughout.

As his wife Pat Nixon, Joan Allen also does an unspeakable work. Her character is much more amiable and less compromised with reality (as Pat was not as much of a public figure) but it’s also tremendous in that it holds much of the human load of the story and she does that easily. I could really feel and understand the love between Dick the husband and Pat the wife and it’s in great part because of her.

The cast, as expected, is large and wide. Just to mention a few names, aside from the aforementioned, Ed Harris, David Hyde Pierce, Paul Sorvino, Tony Goldwin, Madeline Kahn and Dan Hedaya show up. The cinematography by Robert Richardson, score by John Williams and editing by Brian Berdan and Hank Corwin are also notable. I guess, somehow, if he had had the opportunity to watch this, Nixon would’ve grinned… and then grimaced.

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Review

The Duchess

Director

Saul Dibb

Year

2008

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Dukes and duchesses are less popular than kings and queens by definition but their personal stories can be far more intriguing, after all, it’s human drama that counts. Not the case of The Duchess! And it’s not even the real character’s fault, but on the contrary: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, led quite an interesting life and was extremely popular; it’s the movie that doesn’t do her justice.

Sure, her story cannot be altogether intriguing since she didn’t quite affect the fate of a country or was involved in any major event of England, but her story had so much more meat than shown here. It’s a shame. This is the kind of historical drama that’s sumptuous enough but let down by its treatment; costumes, makeup, production design and music (by Rachel Portman) become sadly meaningless.

I liked the way Georgiana was handled at first. Keira Knightley plays her against-type in the sense that she’s a noblewoman (of 16) who doesn’t betray her education and sees her arranged marriage to the Duke of Devonshire as something exciting and well-worth a life without love. She’s destined to become just like her mother, Lady Spencer (Charlotte Rampling), who never carps about her destiny.

William Cavendish, fifth Duke of Devonshire, as played by Ralph Fiennes, is a brutal man who really doesn’t care for love as much as he does for his dogs or his unborn male heir, as expected from this sort of fellow, which just adds to the realism. I liked the way Georgiana only hoped that her loveless marriage could be smoothed out through conversation (instead of straight rape) but never really hoped that it could be lovely. Both are characters I believed in.

However, sadly, this genuineness turned counterproductive. The duchess is so cold, it’s hard to care for her. The duke is by no means interesting even though he’s strong and intimidating. When a third party enters the picture, Lady Elizabeth Foster (Hayley Atwell), who at first befriends the duchess and later romances the duke, creating an in-your-face love triangle, we’re not sure whom to care for: the duchess, who’s so shamelessly neglected; the duke, who at last found his heart’s desire; or Bess, who’s trapped in sin and shame for the sake of her estranged children.

In truth, we don’t care for either, so we start looking for something to carry us through: will it be Georgiana’s passion for politics in support of Charles Fox (Simon McBurney) or her extramarital affair with statesman Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper) or her eventual rise against her husband? Frankly, we just don’t give a damn. It’s all for naught. I’m bleeding words just writing about the movie, while Georgiana’s story could fill books!

This should be completely trivial, but Georgiana was an ancestor of Princess Diana of Wales and you can find parallelisms in their stories. That’s not a reason to bring interest to the movie, but if it worked, I’m not about to acknowledge it as any cause of quality.

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Review

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Director

Mark Herman

Year

2008

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Considering the story goes on mostly in Auschwitz, you can’t hope for a brighter side of the Holocaust than that seen from the point of view of a Nazi boy in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. He is, naturally enough, not the same as the boy in the title, that one being a prisoner in the camp where the Nazi boy’s father, who is the one worth being called that (and proud of it), is Kommandant. How to explain what’s going on to an eight-year-old? “You see… These people are not really people at all” is a worthy approach, but the kid, Bruno, convincingly played by Asa Butterfield, quite prefers to think these people are farmers in pyjamas (or pajamas, depending on which side of the world you’re on, but he’s in Germany, so).

One wonders how it all works. It’s actually very simple, I would volunteer: everything we are, the way we think, the perspective from which we see things and the manner in which we act is a construction of paradigms that come from childhood in many cases, and become so hard to break we just simply buy them as our own. The contrast between father and son here, for example, is remarkable. Herr Kommandant, played by David Thewlis, is not a bad man, or so thinks Bruno who refuses to see him as such and to an extent so do we, but hell, he hates Jews with all his might, he believes they deserve what they’re getting under his custody and he’s just not gonna stop believing that no matter what anyone says.

So what’s Bruno’s fate? Is he heroic enough to grow up differently? Certainly not. The example is perfectly illustrated through his sister, at first a child who plays with blonde dolls and later a perfect believer of the Nazi ideals who puts her dolls away and hangs propagandistic posters on her wall, dresses as a Nazi girl and falls in love with one so brutal that he can pound a Jew to death in their house with their father not doing a thing to stop him. It’s all perfectly systematic: the natural conflict arises that the father did nothing to save a human being from death; Bruno can’t get that; his sister, Gretel (Amber Beattie), now struggling to become a woman with her own opinion, simply decides it’s wiser to trust her dad’s judgment… though she doesn’t really get it either.

The mother, performed in scene-stealing fashion by Vera Farmiga, is also a wonderful character: she’s immersed in the ideals but suddenly starts to wonder what’s the logic behind it and can’t quite grasp it; I’m not sure how believable it is that this would happen to the mother of Bruno while he’s going through a similar phase, only in reverse (struggling to stay away from horror rather than running away from it), but that they’re mother and son, even though they never talk about these matters, is probably what makes it plausible.

The whole piece is rather neutral, as ought to be, because siding with a perspective would eliminate the poignancy of Bruno discovering the world in which he lives and the adults around interpreting it through their old paradigms. The whole thing is rather un-self-conscious, and I liked it. Even James Horner’s score, though moving, is rather restrained.

The story, scripted by director Herman from the novel by John Boyne, twists, and that’s lucky because we don’t care much for the chronicle of a yet unspoiled Nazi kid growing up to be unwillingly brutal, not to say that brutality doesn’t deserve a punishment but I’m a fervent believer that all sociopaths and psychopaths are sick, in many cases, beyond their control.

The twist comes as Bruno, who dreams of being an explorer, goes farther than allowed and suddenly finds himself in the camp limits where a metallic fence separates him from the horrors of Auschwitz and, more specifically, from a boy his age who’s wearing a pyjama all day long, the slothful brat. (Hold your horses! That’s how Bruno sees him.) As their friendship evolves, the movies comes to life, and the kid, Shmuel (Jack Scanlon, who in my opinion looked healthier than he acted), isn’t even much of a conversationalist, but he’s the most puzzling creature Bruno could have found, and one human being he prefers above all others. How their relationship evolves and what happens in the end is probably too much to be likely, but it’s something from a child’s tale that can’t be faulted except when seen through the morbid eye of an adult.

Bruno refuses to see reality. Somehow, the kid on the other side does too. Even though he knows and understands that being a Jew is the worst mistake anyone could make in the time and place where he lives, he’s proud enough to stick to his family and repudiate those who persecute them but simply can’t see why. It’s not for a kid to understand. The most valuable asset of this film, I think, is the understanding that reality is nothing but a series of interpretations and that it depends entirely on who’s telling the story. As told from the point of view of a boy who hasn’t really interpreted much yet, this is priceless.

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