The Boy In the Striped Pyjamas

CAST

- David Thewlis

Set during World War II, a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.

The Reader

CAST

- Ralph Fiennes
- Kate Winslet

Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.

'Tis the season for WW2 dramas. So far I've only seen these two but I'm sure there's at least a couple more floating around. My pick would have to be The Reader. Although slow moving, I found the characters to be far more interesting and the storyline was more engaging than Striped PJ's was. Also, The Reader sounded a lot more authentic with the actors giving their characters German accents while The Boy In Striped Pyjamas actors all speaking in their native English accents, even though they are meant to be German.

And another thing. I didn't really feel for the characters in The Striped Pyjamas either. Maybe it was the accents but they just didn't do anything for me. I read thru the forums at IMDB and people were saying they were crying but I can't say I ever came close.

Both are good movies though. So if I had to recommend only one I'd have to go with The Reader. Kate Winslet was very good and so was Ralph Fiennes. Also, both films are tragic and are from a German perspective which is nice to see. Sorta sick of seeing yanks or other allies storming a beach or whatever so these movies were a breath of fresh air.

Sick of the Jewish brainwashing we seem to continually get about ww2.

What are they trying to hide ?

faceman, just f*** off and die already.

http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/drezs2_dees.jpg

what about the 100 million londonders the luftwaffe wiped out during the blitz

This is ww2 we are talking about right? Because 70 million people are estimated to have been killed. Where did you get 100 f***ing million from?

nah its all a giant fraud.

the v2 in the blitz weren't actually rockets, they were carrier pigeons strapped to grenades. and as everyone knows carrier pigeons only ever return home. they were british, so theres conclusive proof of a British conspiracy.

even the nazi concentration camps, we've totally got the wrong story there. they were in fact an early attempt to create the tv show that later became seinfeld. some of the material produced can clearly be seen in the later show. the soup nazi and the pretzel episode for example.

it must be true bats***

i read it on the internets

reading this thread made my drunken head type boggle

Seriously Faceman, complaining about what Israel is doing is one thing, but to be a total racist and call into question the actuality of the entire Hollocaust is just plain low.

" Of course the Holocaust happened, in a general sense. The question is how much of it happened. Only an idiot would say "the Holocaust didn't happen." The other side tries to pretend that revisionism is "Holocaust denial." When you say "the Holocaust didn't happen," you are just playing right into their hands, and discrediting revisionism. "
http://www.geniebusters.org/915/04g_gas.html

I agree with Rev .. Striped Pyjamas was built up to try and hit you in the face at the end, but I just didn't care about the characters enough so it was a letdown for me. I thought the reader was okay, but wasn't great either. Winslett was awesome but that was about it.

Not getting in on the FaceMan bashing (despite how much I want to at this point), consider objectively - if you can - the following:

Dresden was horrific, yes. But so was what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Given that dropping Fat Man and Little Boy weren't done to cement the defeat of Germany and Japan, but rather in the hopes of staving off the escalation of the Cold War (which was already under way) into a very nasty, very bloody Hot War. Given the similar timing of the bombing of Dresden with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, can you honestly say that a series of attacks by allied forces (indicating strength, unity and a shared resolve) couldn't possibly have been aimed at preventing further bloodshed?

Even if we accept the high-end of the estimates for the number of people killed, 60,000 casualties* is still an "acceptably" small number compared to the potential loss of life if the Cold War had escalated into fully-blown pitched battles.

I have to say, this is why I'm glad I'm not a military leader or head of state in the middle of a war like this. The thought of having to have the courage to make the call that sixty, one hundred or even two hundred thousand peoples' deaths was "acceptable" in the grand scheme of things would have me waking up screaming for the rest of my life.

I don't think anyone in their right mind could possibly say that any of the horrific actions committed in either World War by the Allies (I'm specifically avoiding mentioning the Axis powers here, it's just too messy and generalisations can't be realistically made) were done with the intended purpose of killing civilians simply for the sake of it, or out of a sense of misguided revenge etc...

Also, I haven't bothered to re-read or format this post as it's already taken too long to write. If there are any typos, run-on sentences or sentences that don't go anywhere, I apologise.




* Figures taken from http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/trial/defense/evans/520di#evans_520di7p512n52. The URL itself is irrelevant, the sources cited are what's interesting.

Saw an interesting doco late on SBS couple of months ago on the end of ww2.
McCarthur didnt want Emperor Hirohito tried/hanged as a War Criminal because the ppl loved him like a god. The Emperor could never be wrong, infallible, so if the war was wrong the Emperor must have been wrong.

Tojo inferred the Emperor had agreed to the war at the end of the last days of his trial. That night emissaries for the royalty visited Tojo in his cell and implored him to deny the Emperor agreed with the war. Tojo did this the following day at trial which was quite a heroic thing to do for his country.

Sounds like an interesting documentary. Probably a fairly accurate view (in general terms) of the significance of the Emperor in Japanese society too.

...and Its not illegal to research what happened in Dresden.

War really is the most horrible thing that can happen.
Its difficult to understand the horrors of what men do in war when you are sitting in a loungeroom sipping a Chardonnay.

My grandfather fought in WW1 around the Somme and those areas.
The Great War. The War to end all wars. what a joke.
Got the boat aged 17 to England then across to France.
He was gassed 3 times and wounded twice. That wasnt unusual.
He would never talk about the war which frustrated the family.
Died when i was like 5. The old man still has his medals and records which are online at the war memorial site.

f***ing stupid british officers wasted thousands of Aussies.

" Of course the Holocaust happened, in a general sense. The question is how much of it happened. Only an idiot would say "the Holocaust didn't happen." The other side tries to pretend that revisionism is "Holocaust denial." When you say "the Holocaust didn't happen," you are just playing right into their hands, and discrediting revisionism. "
http://www.geniebusters.org/915/04g_gas.html

Sorry, you're right, my wording was unnecessarily strong, I didn't think you were denying the holocaust happened, I just think that throwing conspiracy theories into the mix because you have an agenda threatens to put doubt in people's minds and risks them not learning from what should never happen again.

As much as you obviously have extremely prejudiced views towards Jews, it's important for the things that were done to them to be discussed often and made clear so that generations to come all understand the horror of such genocide. The fact that so much genocide still happens around the world shows how people haven't learnt and are still happy to sit by and let this sort of thing happen as long as it isn't happening to them. Especially when at the same time wars are waged over comparatively worthless things such as oil.

As for WWII, war is f***ing stupid and there's no doubt that both sides did horrible things. As for the more political stuff I agree it's very interesting to find out the reasoning and planning behind some of these terrible events.

Also, who is Tojo?
Edit: nm I read up on it a little, though I still don't understand why it was advantageous for the Allies to exonerate the Emperor?

This is the Show i saw
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/filmmore/index.html

and this is a little bit of the story behind the reasoning of keeping Hirohito out of War Crimes trials.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/peopleevents/pandeAMEX97.html

It was feared many Japanese would suicide if Hirohito was punished.
" to many of his subjects, the "emperor of heaven" was not really a man at all, but the living embodiment of the Japanese people."

faceman is the reason sbs has so many hitler documentaries