The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas - The genesis of the film
Adapted from John Boyne's best-selling novel, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is a fictional story told through the eves of an eight year old boy largely shielded from the reality of World War II.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a fable intended to provide a unique perspective on the effects of prejudice, hatred and violence on innocent people, particularly children, during wartime. Through the eyes of a fanciful, eight year-old German boy who is largely shielded from the realities of the war, we witness a forbidden friendship that develops between Bruno, son of a Nazi commandant, and Shmuel, a Jewish boy imprisoned in a concentration camp. Although physically separated by a barbed wire fence, the boys’ lives become inescapably intertwined.
“It goes without saying that a work of fiction set in the time and place of the Holocaust is contentious and any writers who tackle such stories had better be sure of their intentions before they begin. This is perhaps particularly important in the case of a book written for children,” says John Boyne, author of the bestselling novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. “For me, a 34-year-old Irish writer, it seemed that the only respectful way to approach the subject was through innocence, with a fable told from the point of view of a rather naive child who couldn’t possibly understand the horrors of what he was caught up in. I believe that this naiveté is as close as someone of my generation can get to the dreadfulness of that period.”
Boyne continues: “What happens in this place? Bruno wonders. Why are there so many people on the other side of the fence? Simple questions, perhaps, but at a basic level, aren’t these the questions we still ask? And perhaps that’s the job for any writer or artist, to keep looking for answers, to make sure those questions continue so that no one ever forgets why they needed to be raised in the first place.”
David Heyman, the producer behind the Harry Potter franchise, had circled around the novel THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS although it was director and screenwriter Mark Herman who optioned the book. When he and Herman met and discovered that they had similar thoughts and sensibilities about the project, they decided to work together. Both of them recognized that a work of fiction set within the context of the Holocaust is controversial territory but they were passionate in their response to the story as a compelling and accessible human drama with a perennially important message. They agreed with Boyne that every attempt to explore the dark heart of the Nazi era in the effort to enlighten new generations so that they neither forget nor repeat what happened is not only valid but also necessary.
“When I read the book, I could immediately imagine a film,” says Mark Herman. “But I could also imagine a film that was going to be very difficult to get off the ground because of the extremely sensitive nature of the subject."
“One of Graham Greene’s characters says that hate is a failure of imagination,” says David Heyman. “I firmly believe that and I also believe that the enormity of the Holocaust – the scale of the barbarity, the number of the dead and displaced and exponentially, of the lives destroyed - makes it impossible to get the measure of because the figures are frankly inconceivable. If you are trying to introduce a child to that not-so-distant period in time, those numbers are extremely distancing. I think John Boyne found an exceptionally emotive and effective way to address that by focusing his story on two boys and one family.”
Heyman continues: “I’m drawn to human stories, and this is first and foremost a human tale. Whilst it is a Holocaust story set in 1940s Germany, for me, it’s timeless. With all the conflicts going on today, whether in Rwanda, Somalia, Palestine, Israel, Darfur, Zimbabwe or Iraq, this story seems to me to be as relevant today as at any time in history. It's one that resonates with me and has touched thousands of readers around the world. That children have the potential and the ability to overcome differences in culture and identity; that people ultimately can get along if they’re not encouraged to hate; that governments, institutions and the media can and do cultivate conflict and distrust – these are timely ideas with universal relevance and I think this story makes them accessible to anyone.”
“The Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel says if you weren’t there, don’t write about it,” says author John Boyne. “And to a point, I agree with that. At the same time, we’re told that we must never forget. So I believe that, as the decades go on, it is up to artists to find new ways of telling this story, of reminding the world of those who died. If you approach the subject in a non-exploitative way, trying not to trivialize it but to tell the story another way to reach a new audience, you are accomplishing your goal. I always tell children who have read my book ‘If you were moved by it, if the story of these two boys is interesting to you, here’s a list of books you should read.’ And those books are by people such as Wiesel, Primo Levi and Anne Frank – writers who experienced the Holocaust and have the moral authority. I hope that artists today can do that: get children interested and direct them to the books they should be reading.”
Every member of the production team behind The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is very clear that they were filming a work of fiction and not a documentary. Nevertheless, as the story draws from history, meticulous care was taken to respect the historical context.
“We were extremely concerned with authenticity," says Mark Herman. "When researching the adaptation, I learned that the camp commandants were sworn to secrecy under threat of certain death to keep their activities top secret. They were forbidden to tell anybody, including their own families, what their ‘work’ entailed. This was helpful when writing the script, particularly to explain why the commandant hadn’t told his wife about the extermination program - she thinks it is a labour camp and only accidentally discovers the truth. An audience today has the benefit of historical hindsight - certain things would be obvious to them. It would seem to an audience today that surely the wife knew; she's living next to a concentration camp, surely she knew. But some of them didn’t know. The commandant's wife at Auschwitz, for example, was living virtually on top of the camp without knowing it was a death camp for two years. The fascination of the story is that these two boys, from either side of the fence, don’t actually know what’s going on.”
“Mark has intensified the drama of the family and brought in this adult viewpoint of the Mother gradually discovering what is going on in the camp which was much less developed in the book,” says co-producer Rosie Alison of Heyday Films who coordinated the historical research for the film. “He also added a Nazi propaganda film which emerged from our research, a repellent 14-minute short purporting to show life in the camps: recreational activities, convivial dining, smiling faces. Mark decided to shoot a version for the film so that Bruno has a few glimpses of it and thinks he knows what the camp is like because he’s seen the footage and it looks quite nice. This slightly and briefly renews his faith in his father.”
Alison continues: "This is a story based on history and we were careful to treat that history with respect,” she says. “It's a very oblique drama - everything is seen from the other side of the fence until the very end and the reality of the camp is kept out of sight until the closing scenes. The most controversial aspect of the story, perhaps its greatest use of artistic license, is Shmuel’s presence in the concentration camp. It is probably the area where fiction and truth separate the most in our film because the unimaginably horrible fact is that most children arriving in the camps were immediately sent to their deaths. By 1944, however, particularly in Auschwitz, there were children still surviving and there are individual cases of children kept alive, whether for medical experiments or for specific jobs (such as a documented instance of two boys kept at Treblinka to feed the ducks in the pond). There are famous photographs of child survivors at the liberation of the camps but it is true that they were generally taken straight from the transport into the gas chambers and Shmuel's story therefore requires a suspension of disbelief."
“History has a pattern of repeating itself and I think that it’s very important that these stories are told, in whatever form and by whomever, as long as the emotional content is real and true,” says producer David Heyman. “This is the story of an ordinary family, ordinary people who through ignorance, innocence or unquestioning obedience to authority - no matter how appalling the demands of that authority - recognizably embody Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’. I hope that young people and other audiences will be moved by The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and come away with a greater understanding of the personal cost of such tragedy and their kinship with the participants – perpetrators and victims alike.
The film was made with honesty, passion and conviction by people who have great respect and admiration for those who survived, and great respect and admiration for those who did not. I do think it is very important to keep this story alive so we don’t repeat it and anything we do to this end, any step we take to make one person look at the world a little bit differently I think is worth taking.”
The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas will be released in UK cinemas on 12th September 2008.
