In the movie ‘Boy in the striped pyjamas’ directed by Mark Herman the ideas that are explored are Loss of Childhood innocence, The importance of friendship, and Discrimination. The ideas are important as they help to teach us about the devastating events of the holocaust and how we shouldn’t let history repeat itself. This is done using visual and verbal features such as symbolism, characterisations, and cinematography. Loss of childhood innocence is one important idea that recurs throughout the film ‘Boy in the striped pyjamas’ It is often shown through the use of symbolism one major event shown is how Gretel disposes of her dolls throwing them all into the basement before transforming her room from bright and innocent into a new reality showing posters and propaganda displaying her involvement with the Hitler Youth Movement. Then she became interested in young soldiers all these began taking place and she’s only 12. Besides that one of the main events to set this idea was moving houses, going from a carefree and playful environment into a serious problem. In your childhood you need things to do. You need fun. You need friends and because of moving Bruno was sucked away from all that restricted only his family, soldiers and the front yard. He had some interaction with Pavel the family’s servant but to even more damage his innocence he was exposed to violence when Pavel accidentally spills the wine onto Kolter and then is dragged out and thrashed. That would have done some damage but if you think about it… Bruno being young might now be convinced he would get a beating if he made a ‘slip-up’ like that. That it’s such a bad thing to make a mistake.
But then besides the madness taking place around him he did find a friend, Shmuel which leads me into the importance of friendship. Bruno met Shmuel by accident? Well not necessarily by accident but it was just random as he was told not to go away into the backyard and stuff and he defied the rule and went anyway through the shed window into the woods and then eventually ran into Shmuel and to think if he hadn’t gone then he wouldn’t have met him but he did which really sets the idea but also the main point of the film itself. At once the two boys are drawn to each other because of the fact they are the same age or at least around about the same. They both have no friends, both were pretty much loners and not because they wanted to but neither of them had a choice. Both were forced into seclusion and now they had that association between them they could play games together and get to know what each others life’s are like. You could liken it to pen pals, you two tell each other your life and what it’s like but don’t really see it for yourself. Difference is their interaction was face to face.
As their friendship grew Bruno started to see past the lies he was being fed, the friendship brightened his vision of life and showed him how blind everybody else was being as he now knew first-hand that the Jews were not what they were made out to be. Like all friendships though there was bound to be one problem, that came out when Shmuel was assigned to work at Bruno’s house and they were chatting on when Kolter walked in on them and begun to yell at Bruno demanding to know whether or not he knew Shmuel. In fear he lied and said he had never seen Shmuel before in his life. The guilt got to him and he went back to ask Shmuel’s forgivenes but didn’t see him again till days later. By the looks of things he had been beaten most likely by Kolter so Bruno decided he would make it up to Shmuel for letting him down by suggesting