Adapted from the novel by Irish writer, John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, is a new and unusual entry in the Holocaust film genre. Boyne says that he had always been drawn to the subject and had done much reading about Hitler's "Final Solution" by the time he sat down and began writing the book. He also acknowledges that tackling the subject is "a contentious matter", so he thought long and hard about what he could add.

Boyne decided to write a story from the perspective of a 9 year old boy, the son of a Nazi officer, who is put in charge of a death camp, referred to in the book as "Out-With" and which is barely disguised as Auschwitz. The is surely a new spin, a sort of alternative to Anne Frank, but with a similarly unhappy ending. And ultimately that is the problem with all narratives on the Holocaust, you can never change the ending, it's always the same. Without completely giving everything away, there is a slight spin to this, but not enough to satisfy our need for understanding how and why human beings continue to destroy each other.

The stated objective from Boyne and the screenwriter and director of the film adapta-tion, Mark Herman, was that children are innocent victims of the evils of adults, mes-sage we've seen dramatized before. Yet since the perspective here is of the complicit Nazi officer's family, the challenge is to make the audience/reader care and identify. One cannot help but wonder how any child or adult could not be aware of what was going on around them. Additionally, the problem becomes how to communicate the naive state of mind. Boyne's effort in the book, to get us into a 9 year old and typically narcissistic state of mind, is heroic but not entirely satisfying.

Herman is left to contend with this central narrative dilemma and, not surprisingly, can't quite overcome it. The problem of making the Aryan child the sympathetic victim is exacerbated by the problem of how to visualize thoughts. Herman's decision to forego mechanisms like voice-over narration were probably correct, however, we are left to discern Bruno's (Asa Butterfield) thoughts and naivete through his huge and startlingly blue eyes. This is quite a lot to expect from an adult actor, but to lay that on a child who probably and hopefully has not suffered anything like the persecution of the Jews would be unexpected. Mr. Butterfield is good, but not quite that good. It is then left to Mother as played by Vera Farmiga, also possessed of those beautiful and penetrating eyes, to fill in the gaps of naivete, except that hers is by choice.

Bruno and his family move to "Out-With" when Father (David Thewlis) is reassigned by The Fury, as he is called in the book but not in the film. Bruno is not given any details and feels justly ripped from the comforts and friendships of his home in Berlin. When he arrives he notices from a high window which is later boarded up by his father, a curious place with a fence which he thinks is a farm. He is curious as to why everyone wears striped pajamas, which the viewer knows are prison uniforms. With nothing to do and no friends, Bruno, who likes to explore, wanders through the woods and finds a little boy Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) sitting near the unguarded part of the fence around the camp. They strike up a friendship, which the viewer knows cannot and in fact does not last.

There have been many great masterpieces that documented the mass genocide com-mitted by the Nazis and all who were complicit, from documentary masterpieces like The Sorrow and The Pity and Night and Fog to features such as the Polanski's The Pianist and the far inferior Shindler's List. These films all approach their subject with an epic gravity that is not present in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The perspective here is more along the lines ofThe Diary of Anne Frank except that victim's voice has been entirely erased. Bruno, as the young child of the Nazi, whose thoughts we do not hear or understand makes an unconvincing victim, despite the ending. Shmuel, who by the way look not a bit like a Polish Jewish kid, and Pavel (David Hayman)the house servant who used to be a doctor, really have no voice in the story and that is always such a huge problem. No matter how talented, attractive or engaging he is, we wind up judging. How could this child, the mother, these people, be so absolutely clueless, we ask, without really making the necessary connection to possibility that we could all turn this blind eye.

The detour that the film takes from the end of the book is also unfortunate. Here the film resorts to a cross-cutting, faux suspenseful manipulation that in the end is absolutely unnecessary. You never need to beat the gravity, or absolute horror of what ultimately happened to the souls who found themselves in concentration camps. If you commit to the tragic ending, with no triumph over adversity as in The Pianist, must we have melodrama? It becomes a disservice to the subject and the book. The performances are excellent and the intention here is a good one, but ultimately there is a reason people shy away from dramatizing the Holocaust when there are no real heroes.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas opens November 7, 2008.

Written and directed by Mark Herman, adapted from the novel by John Boyle; director of photography Benoit Delhomme; edited by Michael Ellis; music by James Horner; produced by David Hayman and Mark Herman. Released by Miramax Films. Running time: 93 minutes.

With:Asa Butterfield (Bruno); Jack Scanlon (Shmuel); David Thewlis (Father); Vera Farmiga (Mother); Amber Beattie (Gretel); Rupert Friend (Lieutenant Kotler) and David Hayman (Pavel).