Director Mark Herman tells harrowing Holocaust tale in “The Boy in Striped Pajamas”
Writer-director Mark Herman on the set of “The Boy in Striped Pajamas.”
Jack Scanlon, left, as Shmuel and Asa Butterfield as Bruno in “The Boy in Striped Pajamas,” which opened Friday in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
From Monday’s Life section of The Oklahoman.
Film ”angle” inspired director
Book made director cry; he had to make ”The Boy in Striped Pajamas”
British writer-director Mark Herman felt driven to turn the gripping book “The Boy in Striped Pajamas” into a movie for a simple reason: it made him cry.
“Very, very few books do. And I just felt if you lift, you know, 20 percent of the emotion from the book onto the screen, then it would be a movie worth making. And I’d like to think that we’ve done that,” Herman said in a recent phone interview.
“But it was actually a unique angle that … (author) John Boyne had taken in the novel that attracted me most – not just another Holocaust movie or not just one through the eyes of a child but actually through the eyes of a German child. I thought was very intriguing.”
The story is told from the perspective of Bruno (Asa Butterfield), the sheltered and privileged 8-year-old son of a Nazi commandant (David Thewlis). When his father gets a promotion, Bruno reluctantly leaves behind his friends and the comforts of 1940s Berlin for a bleak house in the countryside.
His mother (Vera Farmiga) forbids him to play with the children on the strange nearby “farm,” where everyone wears striped pajamas, but boredom compels Bruno to disobey. Through the farm’s electrified barbed-wire fence, he strikes up a secret friendship with Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a sad-eyed Jewish boy his age.
Neither Bruno nor Jack realize what the film’s audience knows: That the “farm” where Jack works and lives is actually a concentration camp designed to exterminate Jews.
“The beauty of the movie is its simplicity really. It’s a microcosm. I don’t think I’m the right person, I don’t think I’m capable of making a big, sweeping Holocaust movie. But this is very much a film about a family; the horrors of what’s happening is actually very much in the background. I suppose like all good horror movies, the monster is left hidden really until the very, very last minute,” Herman said.
After reading Irish author Boyne’s 2006 book, Herman decided to secure the rights and write a screenplay himself, realizing that movie studios probably wouldn’t take on such a sensitive project otherwise. Herman, who is best known for writing and directing the acclaimed British films “Brassed Off” and “Little Voice,” also served as the movie’s director and executive producer, working with David Heyman, the producer behind the blockbuster “Harry Potter” franchise.
“I knew from day one that the movie would live or die by the performances of those two 8-year-old kids,” Herman said. “We saw hundreds and hundreds of kids. With David Heyman being the producer … the lines for auditions were about 20 times longer than I had hoped.”
However, star Asa Butterfield, who previously appeared in “Son of Rambow,” was on the first tape he viewed. Herman then cast newcomer Jack Scanlon after testing his chemistry with Butterfield. Both exhibited an amazing natural talent for acting, he said.
Herman said he considers the harrowing and heartwrenching PG-13 tale, which opened Friday in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, a true family film that parents and older children should view together.
“There’s no violence on screen, there’s no bloodshed. They see a lot worse on the news I think than they see in this movie. I mean, obviously, it’s very upsetting. … But I think having your heart broken over a movie, over a fictional tale, is not a bad thing for any kid, and if it makes them want to learn more, then it’s a good thing,” he said.
-BAM
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This movie was extremely well made. Other than the English accent on the Germans, I compliment you to the fullest for addressing emotion in this film. Anyone with the slightest bit of sympathy is going to be extremely touched by this. People are leaving movie theatres with tears running down their faces, after sitting through this dramatic version of history. You give people a partial understanding of what people probably felt through that. I hope we will never understand fully. Very well done, sir.