Malcolm McDowell's rebellious smirk in If...

I was excited to see Malcolm McDowell’s name in the opening credits for The Artist (2011), which I saw this weekend. Although I enjoyed the movie overall, disappointment enveloped me when I realized that his role was merely a cameo near the beginning; I kept thinking that he was going to pop up again, but that was not to be.

My first exposure to Malcolm McDowell, who has unfortunately become more famous for his villainous roles, happened in an undergraduate Cinema Studies class, which was supposed to be a “gut” course. I walked away with a B and a fascination with Malcolm McDowell, the star of three of the films on the syllabus. The class watched A Clockwork Orange (1971, traumatizing for me the first time, but now, I can’t live without it) as well as If… (1968) and O Lucky Man! (1973), both punctuated titles directed by Lindsay Anderson. (For more anecdotes about these films and his friendship with Anderson, check out McDowell’s filmed performance, Never Apologize (2007).)

Several years later, I traveled to New York City to attend a three-day film festival in honor of McDowell, who would appear in tandem with some of the screenings, at the Lincoln Center. I bought tickets for five or six screenings, including Clockwork, If, O Lucky Man, Figures in a Landscape (1970), and Caligula (1979). McDowell conducted Q&A’s after most screenings with the glaring exception of Caligula, which promptly replaced Clockwork as my new (and still-intact) traumatic McDowell film experience. I had several chances to meet McDowell at the festival but didn’t grab the opportunity, including when I could have introduced myself to him and his wife during a break, but something held me back for the sake of their privacy.

Malcolm McDowell's congratulatory smirk in The Artist

My fascination is with the smirk. McDowell’s persona is usually that of a punishing-and-punished little boy who turns on a rebellious, “screw-you” smirk when the heat is on and he wants to say, “I’m still here. What else have you got to throw my way?” He wears this smirk ever so briefly in The Artist but more as a gesture of “congratulations, job well done” toward the heroine. Maybe that’s what his seemingly rebellious smirks have been all this time, only turned in toward himself.

David Hemmings in Blow-Up

As I was watching Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up the other day, I began thinking about a type of movie scene that has always intrigued me. Thomas, the photographer played by David Hemmings in Blow-Up, has furtively shot photographs of a tense scene, involving a man and a woman (called “Jane” on imdb.com), in a park. Afterward, the woman (Vanessa Redgrave) comes to his studio, attempting to get the film roll from him. After she leaves, Thomas begins to crop and blow-up certain shots on the roll in order to figure out what his eyes have missed but what his camera may have seen. The scene, approximately ten minutes long, is totally devoid of dialogue (directly after a lengthy conversation between Thomas and the woman). The scene relies on shots that show Thomas processing and blowing up the pictures; it’s almost a how-to in the mechanics of photographic development. These shots are intercut with point of view shots and shots of Thomas’ face mentally processing what he sees. Because of this careful mise en scene and editing, the audience can attempt to follow Thomas’ train of thought without him uttering one word.

However, Blow-Up’s mental “connect the dots” isn’t as obvious as the opening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Without one word of dialogue in this opening sequence, the tracking camera absorbs enough information so that the audience knows everything it needs to know about Jeffries (James Stewart) at that point in the plot: his profession (like Thomas, he’s a photographer who will use his equipment to see beyond surface reality), his risk-loving personality, his girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), and his accident, which has left him wheelchair-ridden and with his leg in a cast. Over the course of the film, Jeffries’ wildcard personality will be tamed as he silently and verbally processes what he sees across his apartment building’s courtyard, and as he (and Lisa) then become directly involved. In contrast, Thomas can’t ultimately focus his attention long enough to stay on task, become involved, and figure out Blow-Up’s mystery. Preferring fleeting interactions, Thomas also doesn’t have a romantic stake in the crisis as Jeffries does with Lisa.

Another silent scene, which provides needed plot information to the audience, is when Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cleans up his mother’s murder of Marion Crane in Hitchcock’s Psycho. He’s so fast and mechanical in his cleaning of the motel room and his disposal of the body that it’s obvious to the audience that Norman has done this for his mother before, even if we aren’t told Norman’s true identity until the movie’s end. (Speaking of identity, I just finished a fascinating biography, “Split Image: The Life of Anthony Perkins” by Charles Winecoff, which explores the actor’s different personas onscreen as well as off.)

James Spader then...

For some people, Christopher Walken is their favorite eccentric actor. With his creepy persona, the dazed look in his eye, the halted-ness in his voice, and his penchant for breaking out in song and dance, it’s understandable. But when it comes to eccentric actors, James Spader holds a special place in my heart.

I shouldn’t like James Spader; he’s a bit of a prep with a real-life Boston-Brahmin prep-school pedigree. For me, his saving grace is that he dropped out of New York City’s Phillips Academy in the eleventh grade to pursue an acting career. He’s got something going on beneath that golden-boy beauty; he’s The Way We Were’s Hubbell Gardner gone bad.

Maybe it’s his usually villainous, reptilian presence in beloved 80s movies of my childhood, such as Pretty in Pink, Less Than Zero, and Mannequin. (Is it my imagination, or was The United States of Tara‘s Toni Collette channeling Spader’s Pretty in Pink character, Steff, in her last alter, the prep school tie-wearing Brice – such a Brat Pack character name: Video NSFW)

Spader then broke out with a role in the grandfather of all indie films, 1989’s sex, lies, and videotape, winning Best Actor at Cannes. Other offbeat roles would include Crash and Secretary, although he had a mainstream hit with Stargate. An occasional romantic lead would also come his way, such as White Palace in which he plays a young Jewish type-A widower who finds love with an older, Southern, working-class Susan Sarandon. Aside from being an honest and subtle performance, Spader’s trademark intensity still shines in moments, such as when he finds himself missing his messy life with Sarandon’s character while at a spotless female friend’s party (“There’s no dust in her dustbuster!”).

Spader is probably best known as defense attorney Alan Shore on the TV series The Practice and Boston Legal. The role won him three Emmys, making him the only actor to win Best Lead Actor Emmys for the same character on two different series.

James Spader now.

I just learned a few weeks ago that Spader will be replacing Steve Carell’s character on The Office, a show that I was about to give up on. However, I, for one, will keep tuning in to watch the slightly older but still enigmatic James Spader.

Lillian and Dorothy Gish, stars of "The Birth of a Nation" as well as offscreen sisters

Last week, I had the pleasure of leading the monthly DVD discussion of the Movie Meetup group that I belong to. I picked the DVD we were to watch beforehand and discuss later at the actual meetup. I’m happy to say that I did not get kicked out for what I chose, although I thought it best to ask everyone if they were OK with it (they were), and we put a disclaimer up on the event’s web page. And what did I have the group members watch? Oh, a “little” film called “The Birth of a Nation.”

I wanted to discuss “The Birth of a Nation” not only because of its infamy or the fact that our group needed to watch a silent film or it’s the 150^th anniversary of the start of the Civil War; I also wanted to do something that was a bit challenging. Despite its racist character portrayals, plots, and ideas, I think “BofN” has some redeeming qualities as far as its historical significance and its narrative and stylistic innovations

In his “Great Movies” essay on “BofN,” Roger Ebert says that the film “did more than any other work of art to dramatize and encourage racist attitudes in America.” Like “The Triumph of the Will,” “it is a great film that argues for evil. To understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film and even something about evil.”

Some tidbits I learned while researching the film:

• “BofN” is considered the movie that marks the birth of modern American cinema, #44 on AFI’s list of “Top 100 American Films” (1998), part of LOC’s National Film Registry
• According to Variety, it’s the highest grossing film of the silent era at $10 million or $216 million in today’s money; ticket to film was $2 (or $20-43 in today’s money); most profitable film in history until 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”
• Released in 1915, directed by D.W. Griffith, based on novels “The Clansman” and “The Leopard’s Spots” and the play, “The Clansman,” all by Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.
• Griffith’s wife starred in one of the play’s touring companies
• Griffith’s father was a Confederate officer in war and shared war stories with his son
• 1915 marked the 50^th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, Civil War films were popular then and capitalized on the spectacle of war and conventions of the genre, such as the suffering of characters
• Griffith appeared in Civil War plays as a young actor, he directed 11 Civil War-themed one-reelers, which sharpened his skills at handling large crowds and battles scenes, he directed 1 or 2 of these one-reelers per week
• “BofN” was the first movie to be shown at the White House to President Woodrow Wilson, who supposedly said the film was “like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so true.” Later, Wilson backtracked from the quote, if he had even said it at all
• “BofN” was originally titled “The Clansman” at its premiere, but Griffith changed it to “The Birth of a Nation” to reflect his belief that the U.S emerged from the Civil War and Reconstruction as a unified nation
• According to Ebert, some of the most technically accomplished scenes are also the most disturbing, such as the scene near the end in the log cabin, which includes groundbreaking use of cross-cutting but the racist content is difficult to watch
• To portray some of the more prominent black and mulatto characters, white actors wore blackface, mostly when coming into direct contact with white actresses
• Griffith pioneered techniques that we take for granted but that enthralled and possibly confused audience members back then: deep focus, jump cut, cross cut, facial close ups, special effects, night photography
• In battle scenes, Griffith used pyrotechnics to cover up empty spaces in the field
• Griffith relied on lithographs and photographs to make battle scenes authentic, relied on drawing of events like Lee’s surrender and Lincoln’s assassination
• There were widespread protests upon the movie’s release, it was banned in several cities, riots broke out in some places where it was released, and there were instances of white-on-black violence
• Actual clansmen in uniform were used to publicize the LA opening
• The resulting outcry caused Griffith to make “Intolerance” the following year (1916)
• “BofN” caused black filmmakers to respond with their own films
• “BofN” inspired a resurgence of Ku Klux Klan; as late as 1970s, the KKK was still using the film as a recruitment tool; Dixon apparently repudiated the new clan, but Griffith would play the film for them wherever they were
• To her dying day, “BofN” actress Lillian Gish claimed that the film wasn’t racist
• The film’s sequel, “Fall of a Nation” (1916), directed by Dixon, wasn’t a success and is considered a “lost film”
• Many future actors and directors, including John Ford, Erich von Stroheim, Donald Crisp, and Milton Berle, claimed to have worked on “BofN” but it’s not certain if that’s true

Even though I disagree with its ideas and portrayals, I believe that “The Birth of a Nation” should be available for people to watch uncut. But as with harrowing historical reminders, such as concentration camps and “The Triumph of the Will,” we need to be able to put such artifacts in context through sensitive and thorough interpretation.

The star of such films as Beetlejuice, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, Dracula, The Age of Innocence, Little Women, Reality Bites, and Girl Interrupted, her beauty, talent, and unconventional spirit led her to become an icon of the late 80s and into the 90s. The late film critic Gene Siskel said that she would have made a great silent film star because of her large eyes and emotional but nuanced expressivity. James Mangold, her Girl Interrupted director, seconded that opinion in that DVD’s special features. At her peak, Ryder won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in The Age of Innocence. She was nominated for an Oscar for that part and for Best Actress in Little Women the following year.

In his review of Mermaids, critic Roger Ebert pointed out that Ryder often successfully played in “alienated outsider roles,” reaching out to anyone who has ever felt out of place. Ryder was a role model for me when I was younger because even though she was beautiful, she was still unconventional and relatable – Julia Roberts was from another world, Winona could be from mine. I’d like to think that us smart girls still want to date John Cusack and be friends with (if not actually be) Winona.

A shoplifting incident in 2001 sidetracked Ryder’s career for four years. During that time, she talked in the press about the depression and anxiety that led to her shoplifting. Although Lindsay and Britney have also had similar issues (and then some), I don’t feel the same sort of protectiveness or rooting for their comebacks that I feel with Winona.

In Black Swan, Ryder plays Beth, an older ballerina who has been pushed aside for the ingénues (Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis). I can’t help but see the real-life parallels. A similar scenario occurred upon the release of Girl Interrupted when the younger and flashier Angelina Jolie leapt off the screen and earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Lisa.

In the past several years, Ryder has appeared in supporting roles in A Scanner Darkly, Star Trek, Black Swan, and The Dilemma; in press interviews, she has even talked about a possible Heathers sequel. I hope that some director can nuture Ryder in a lead role in a smaller film much like Sofia Coppola has recently done for Stephen Dorff in Somewhere.

Laurence Harvey (in blond hair and moustache) and Lee Remick in The Running Man

So, I have a dirty little secret: I still use a VCR to record and view VHS tapes. In fact, my mother and I are probably the only people on Earth who know how to successfully program a VCR timer in under a minute.

What’s the deal? Don’t get me wrong – I have a DVD player. But I have a collection of about 150 movies spread out over 50 tapes, mostly recorded from Turner Classic Movies. This leads to some really weird combinations. For example, on one tape, I have The Running Man (1963) a Carol Reed-directed thriller about insurance fraud, starring Laurence Harvey, Lee Remick, and Alan Bates; Woody Allen’s Oscar-winning ode to Diane Keaton, Annie Hall (1977); and Moonstruck (1987), the movie for which Cher accepted her Best Actress Oscar looking more underdressed than usual (depending on which meaning you give to “underdressed,” I suppose). On these tapes, I also have lots of Hitchcock, silents, and foreign classics.

The day will come when I’ll have to give up this antiquated set-up because VCRs and VHS tapes will no longer be made. However, buying replacement DVDs for all of these movies on tape would be expensive. And some of the movies are not available on DVD.

What to do? Suggestions welcome.

"The Virgin Spring"

In honor of Halloween, I’ve come across three revenge films that have the same basic premise but different ways of exploring (exploiting?) their plots, characters, themes, and questions about guilt, justice, redemption, and female empowerment and subjugation. Warning: This post will contain spoilers in order to fully discuss the implications of these elements.

“The Virgin Spring” (1960), directed by Ingmar Bergman, follows a young 14th-century Swedish girl as she is raped and murdered by shepherds in the woods. When the shepherds unknowingly seek shelter with the dead girl’s family, the father, who has discovered what the shepherds have done, kills them to avenge his daughter. Although shocking for its time, the film’s violence and lack of nudity is tame by today’s standards.

“The Last House on the Left” (1972), Wes Craven’s directorial debut, is a loose remake of “The Virgin Spring.” Here, two teenage girls are attacked in the woods by escaped convicts and their accomplices. When the criminals stay the night at the home of one of the girls, her parents brutally kill them. As graphic as “Last House” is in its violence and nudity, “I Spit on Your Grave” (1978) takes everything to a whole new level. Directed by Meir Zarchi, “I Spit on Your Grave,” also known as “Day of the Woman,” is a variation on the women’s revenge plot rather than a direct remake of anything. Its nudity and violence are so extreme and disturbing that in his original review, Roger Ebert gave it zero stars, an “honor” which he usually reserves for films he considers morally irresponsible, and shared the disgusting reactions of his fellow audience members. This film caused a physical sensation of sickness in me that the others two films didn’t, a feeling I haven’t experienced with a movie since watching “Caligula” (during a Malcolm McDowell film festival at Lincoln Center. Malc didn’t show up for that one.) But I didn’t stop watching “Grave”, so what does that say about me?

“The Virgin Spring” is almost presented like a fairy tale, supported by its 14^th-century bucolic setting, its beautiful heroine, the magical setting of the woods (which is subverted here), and the spring that mysteriously emerges from where the girl’s body lays. These fairy tale elements are not found in the other films. Here, redemption is found through New Testament forgiveness; in the latter films, redemption is found through Old Testament revenge. In “Last House,” the teen girls are hardly angels, breaking the stereotypes of the pristine maiden and more reflective on 1970s American culture. “I Spit on Your Grave” presents an independent (no family and friends to protect her), creatively vibrant, single female writer (Jennifer) who is renting a summer house in the country. She is attacked by country bumpkins who seem simultaneously attracted and repulsed by her big-city sophistication and independence.

While the crime in “The Virgin Spring” is painful to watch, Bergman has a purpose of showing it: to introduce those philosophical questions that will come into play later in the plot. “Last House” and “Grave” have left those higher questions behind to focus more on entertainment and voyeurism. Although both films bring up issues of feminism, they verge on exploitation because of the over-the-top amount of nudity and violence for no purpose other than to titillate. In both instances, the women are chased and captured like prey and punished for their independence and rebellion against gender and family roles. What is shown onscreen in “Last House” and “Grave” is therefore simultaneously a reflection and backlash against 1970s feminism.

In the second half of each film, the revenge sequences start to highlight the female empowerment of each film in ascending order. While the father primarily enacts the revenge in “The Virgin Spring,” the mother participates in “Last House,” and Jennifer does it all on her own in “Grave.” After her rapists have torn up her manuscript, she tapes it back up, finding her “voice” again.

Female empowerment aside, are we rooting for the parents and Jennifer when *they* go on *their* killing sprees? If so, are they no better than the criminals? Are we no better than the criminals for watching and finding fulfillment from the actions of our onscreen surrogates? And the boundaries aren’t so clear anymore because in each film, the director uses moral ambiguity to make us question our initial allegiances. In “The Virgin Spring,” a child, the son of one of the shepherds, is a confused and innocent onlooker, but the father still kills him and later regrets it. In “Last House,” a woman is an accomplice, although that doesn’t exempt her from guilt and punishment in this context. In “Grave,” one of the culprits is mentally challenged, so although he did technically participate, he was manipulated by the others, making his murder by Jennifer questionable.

Although inherently chaotic, “Virgin Spring” and “Last House” are firmly grounded in family units. Even the shepherds in “The Virgin Spring” and the criminals in “Last House” are alternative families which each include a father and son. As a career woman, the heroine of “Grave” has made sacrifices of family and friends.

“Last House” and “Grave” have both recently been remade, showing how they are still attractive to certain filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino, and moviegoers and have contributed to the prevalence of today’s “torture porn” movies.

1967 also saw the release of Richard Brooks’ screen adaptation of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.” Rather than presenting its killers as glamorous, “In Cold Blood,” by following the original book’s content and style, presented an accurate portrait of the real-life 1959 murders of the Clutter family in rural Holcomb, Kansas. The film would push the envelope (it was the first commercially released film in the U.S. to use the word “shit) but in different ways. Unlike other crime movies and books, “In Cold Blood” is not about the who, the what, or even the why (none of which are really a secret), but about the how, which is not revealed until toward the end. In its quest for accuracy in content and feel (and in keeping with Capote’s style), the film reports the facts with very little emotion and uses a “you-are-there” realism through its use of specific stylistic choices, including black-and-white cinematography, the use of unknown actors (Scott Wilson as Dick and Robert Blake as Perry, whose own life in his later years would mirror that of Perry’s), and the use of real locations, such as the actual Clutter house. In these ways, “In Cold Blood” seems more European than Hollywood.

However, emotion does happen during instances when the audience can’t help but sympathize and even identify with Perry, seemingly the more sensitive and pathetic of the pair. Brooks uses experiences that only we share with Perry and with no one else. These include Perry’s fantasy of singing in Vegas, his frustration and feelings of personal affront when he’s trying to find a pay phone in a bus station, and his memories of an unhappy childhood and a motorcycle accident. These peeks into Perry’s psyche are presented with minimal sound effects and no dialogue, except for when his mother calls out his name in the distance. Perry’s slowing heartbeat is the very last thing you hear on a blank screen at the film’s conclusion. These moments of viewer connection with Perry are even more jarring when we finally discover his exact role in the killings.

Brooks (and Capote in the source material) not only makes connections between Perry and the audience but between characters, which suggests an inevitability of everything that happens. Side note: I think this inevitability contrasts with the randomness of events apparent in other breakthrough films of the era, including “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Easy Rider,” but that’s probably for another entry. This is most obvious in certain shots in adjacent scenes between the killers (especially Perry) and the Clutters and later between the killers and the police. The shots, abruptly coming one after the other, are almost like a call and response or a question and answer. For example, Nancy, the Clutters’ daughter, picks up the phone to make a call; in the next shot, Perry picks up his phone, and it seems that he is answering her call, but we are in a different scene altogether. In another instance, Mr. Clutter is shaving and bends down in front of his bathroom mirror to rinse his face; in the following shot/scene, Perry rises in front of a mirror. After the murders, the Clutter housekeeper asks the police where the Clutter son Kenyon’s portable radio is; the next shot/scene shows a close-up of that radio with Perry and Dick, who have stolen it. During the investigation, the detectives refer to the unknown killers as being anyone on the street; this leads to a long shot of Dick and Perry walking on a crowded street.

Films about Truman Capote’s trips to Kansas to write “In Cold Blood” and his interactions with Dick and Perry include “Infamous” (with Toby Jones, 2006) and “Capote” (with an Oscar-winning performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman, 2005).

Robert Downey, Jr. as Chaplin

Directed by Lord Richard Attenborough (Gandhi) and featuring an all-star cast, Chaplin (1992), a good if unremarkable film, is worth a look because of Robert Downey Jr.’s Oscar-nominated (and BAFTA-winning) lead performance. His Charlie Chaplin’s physicality, mannerisms, and voice are dead-on, both in and out of the Little Tramp character. In the Chaplin DVD’s special features, Richard Schickel, Time film critic, says that Downey’s performance has a “wistfulness” and “stunned” quality as he encounters people, places, and things (such as film) for the first time. I would go a step further and add that his performance is imbued with a childlike quality, which allows the character to be open and to endlessly create. Schickel also says that Downey’s performance is the film’s “saving grace.”

The idea of performance and the real human being underneath constantly informs Chaplin. The film opens with Downey as Chaplin removing his iconic Little Tramp makeup, as the black-and-white film stock subtly transforms into color, from film to life, from character to person, from artificiality to reality. The film is structured around an older Chaplin’s voiceovers and flashbacks as a (fictional) book editor (Anthony Hopkins) attempts to fill in gaps in the star’s autobiography. Until this editor entered the picture, Chaplin was able to control his own story. Now, he is forced to confront the unpleasant parts of his life, such as his propensity for underage girls and his mixed emotions about family, creativity, America, and fame.

Chaplin’s struggles with his personal demons parallels Downey’s own life at the time of the film’s shooting. Underneath Downey’s undisputed talent and professionalism lay a raging drug addiction, this would temporarily sidetrack his career a few years after Chaplin’s release. Downey has performed Chaplin’s song “Smile” about keeping up appearances through adversity, and the song emerges in the film as Chaplin returns to London for the first time since becoming world-famous. He has literally just learned that his first love, whom he met in London, has died. Now, he must put aside grief, smile, and give the waiting swarm of fans what they want.

How the film is made even showcases aspects of persona, performance, and surface artificiality, including the use of traditional silent-film techniques, such as wipes, irises, dissolves, slow-motion, and fast-motion to move the film along or to comment on the action. As in the silent era, Chaplin also uses long shots to spotlight Chaplin’s/Downey’s performance, especially in instances of slapstick. There are also scenes which explain the creative tricks that silent filmmakers used to get around limited resources, money, and technology. Use of these techniques makes the film into a mix of modern, accurate realism in its content and a self-conscious spectacle which brings attention to the act and artificiality of silent-era filmmaking. “Nothing quite like it, the feeling of film,” the older Chaplin points out to the book editor, emphasizing the Chaplin’s dependence of style as much as substance to tell its story. In the DVD special features, Lord Attenborough says that he regrets the “theatricality” (i.e., the use of silent-film technique and artificiality) in the film and that the film isn’t as “profound” as it might have been. Maybe not, but making silent-film technique a part of the film itself is Chaplin’s other “saving grace,” second only to Robert Downey Jr.

Asa Butterfield as "Bruno" in "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas"

Stephen King supposedly never liked Stanley Kubrick’s movie adaptation of King’s novel, The Shining. Apparently, Stanley decided to “forget” a lot of the back story to make a more vaguely sinister kind of film. Comparing novels and their subsequent film adaptations, especially if you’re a fan of the novel, can be an interesting and often infuriating exercise. What we see onscreen may or may not live up to the movie playing in our own heads. Conversely, if we come to the novel after seeing the film, we often can’t help but see Vivien Leigh when we read Margaret Mitchell’s characterization of Scarlett O’Hara.

Based on a young-adult novel written by John Boyne in 2006, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” (2008) tells the story of Bruno, a nine year-old boy growing up in Nazi Germany. Bruno’s father has been promoted to oversee the Auschwitz concentration camp. Bruno eventually befriends a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp’s fence. Vera Farmiga, Oscar-nominated this year for “Up in the Air,” plays Bruno’s mother.

Overall, the movie is very true to the book, except for one very important aspect. Because of the inherent visual nature of the medium, film must show most plot elements onscreen. With “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” film, the audience knows almost immediately that the story is taking place in Nazi Germany, and that Bruno’s father works for Hitler and will be overseeing a concentration camp where Jews are being killed. We know these facts and their implications way before Bruno does.

On the other hand, because of the inherent qualities of the literary form, the “Boy in the Striped Pajamas” novel, although in third person, tells the entire story from Bruno’s innocent perspective. Boynes’ simple word choice and sentence structure are even childlike, unlocking Bruno’s thoughts and feelings as if they were objective facts  – Boyne rarely starts out with “Bruno thought…” This simple objectivity makes the horrors going on around Bruno even starker. We discover what’s happening as he does (or a little earlier, contributing to a foreboding sense of inevitability) because plot elements and details unfold as he unintentionally reveals them through his limited perspective. He thinks that “Auschwitz” is “Out-with,” that the Fuhrer is the “Fury,” and that the Jewish prisoners are on a farm and choose to wear striped pajamas. This method is more effective than the film’s because we are then more connected to Bruno’s innocence and his eventual realization of how unnecessarily cruel humans can be to each other, culminating in a shocking and gut-wrenching ending.

However, the movie’s images are sometimes more powerful than the novel’s text. In the film (although not in the novel), Bruno comes across dolls in the basement, presumably taken from the camp’s Jewish children. He doesn’t realize where they came from though. To him, it’s just a strange sight to come across. The movie includes some scenes that because of its limited point of view are not in the novel. For instance, Bruno’s mother figures out and confronts her husband about the fate of the camp’s prisoners. In the novel, the mother is more consumed by her apparent relationship with a young lieutenant, but the film seems to require an adult voice (and a star one at that) to be the moral center, voicing the audience’s sadness and anger.

Side note: “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” movie reminded me a little of “Swing Kids,” a critically derided movie that I like and that is a bit of a cult favorite. Starring Christian Bale, Robert Sean Leonard, Frank Whaley, Barbara Hershey, Noah Wyle, and an uncredited Kenneth Branagh, it depicts German teens who are ignorant of Nazi offences until the Nazis take away their beloved jazz records. What spoiled brats, I know. But as with Bruno, there is a similar childlike selfishness/innocence and subsequent discovery of reality when it actually begins to directly affect them.