Word: shmuel
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...even the relatively hawkish Israeli commentator Shmuel Rosner warns that "Israel should restrain itself from declaring victory just yet. True, Obama had to draw down his overeager demands from Israel. But it is also true that Netanyahu, not long ago, had to reverse his opposition to a two-state solution and publicly declare that his goal is similar to the one espoused today by Obama. True, Abbas was dragged to the summit only days after insisting that he will not come to any meeting unless settlement construction is frozen first. But it is also true that Netanyahu, the head...
...farm” is actually the concentration camp his father supervises. After finding out about the nearby camp, Elsa forbids Bruno to go exploring behind the house, and Bruno, of course, disobeys her instructions. During his exploration of the camp’s perimeter, he comes upon a boy, Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), sitting on the other side of the large electric fence.Unable to comprehend the gravity of Shmuel’s situation, Bruno is simply content to have found a playmate. Though Bruno is confused by Shmuel’s constant hunger and the strange “pajamas?...
...even allowed to go to school; he and his sister are tutored at home by a Nazi functionary, while their mother (Vera Farmiga) ditheringly denies what she must know is taking place in the camp. Eventually Bruno wanders through the woods, encounters the barbed wire and Shmuel, an inmate of his own age. He wonders why the boy always wears "pajamas" (actually, of course, the striped prison uniform), thinks perhaps the numbers sewn on this garb are part of some fun game his pal is playing. His misapprehension is reinforced by a movie about camp life his father has produced...
...remain unconscious to every clue - and there are many - about what is happening in the family's backyard. Even when the gas chambers are fired up, smoke blackening the sky and stench filling their nostrils, they insist the camp is just burning some old clothes. The largest silence is Shmuel's, who never forthrightly explains his desperate circumstances to Bruno. Maybe he doesn't want to shock his new friend. More likely his true imprisonment is in the desperate manipulations of this movie, its need to keep everyone in a state of ignorance or denial until Shmuel sneaks Bruno into...
...think I've seen - at least since equally offensive concentration camp fable, Life Is Beautiful - a movie so reliant on human stupidity to achieve its effect, so totally dishonest in its insistence on that quality (which it presents as innocence) to achieve its narrative goals. Bruno and Shmuel may be only eight years old, but that is well past the age of reason, and they are caught up in situation that would force anyone to acquire a shrewdness well in advance of their years. I don't know if a movie as simpleminded and emotionally shameless as this one definitively...