As one boy faces the hidden horrors of occupation in Au Revoir Les Enfants, another witnesses firsthand the slaughter, hate and inhumanity of a world torn apart by fascism in Come and See. These powerful films, exploring War Through a Child’s Eyes, are urgent reminders of the horrors of the past and an even more urgent call to uphold the pledge of “Never Again!“
Louis Malle’s 1987 masterpiece, Au Revoir Les Enfants, is a genuinely breathtaking exploration of the end of childhood innocence during wartime, and the perfect place to open our exploration of War Through a Child’s Eyes.
Set in a Catholic boarding school in Nazi-occupied France in 1944, twelve-year-old Julien (Gaspard Manesse) is confused by the community’s willingness to collaborate with their occupiers, and by the German soldiers’ lack of aggression as they enjoy small-town French life. As Julien struggles to unpick the feelings and thoughts of the adults around him, watching events unfold from a position of relative safety, he is about to face the realities of war in a community where rebellion sits beneath a facade of conformity.
When a new boy, Jean (Raphaël Fejtö), enrols at his school, Julien finds a friend who is just as artistic and curious as he is. While quiet and reserved, Jean allows Julien to escape his confusion, but as their friendship grows, Julien also finds himself perplexed by the school’s protection of Jean. His young mind cannot grasp that Jean’s enrollment at the school hides a secret that, if uncovered, could lead to disaster for Jean and the teachers protecting him.
Au Revoir Les Enfants is partly based on Malle’s own childhood experience, and this relationship with the director’s memories and emotions permeates every frame. Malle’s film is an ode to lost innocence that delicately dissects the complex relationship between religion, community, collaboration, and rebellion in occupied France through the eyes of two pre-teen boys.
The result is a beautiful yet heartwrenching journey into the horror of occupation and the bravery of a quiet rebellion for two children on the verge of adolescence. Malle carefully and powerfully explores the power of friendship, subjugation, courage and the end of innocence as the horrors of the Holocaust invade an occupied French town.
Like Malle’s powerful exploration of lost innocence, Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun, adapted from J.G. Ballard’s novel, is about the moment childhood innocence is lost forever as social constructs of class, place and position are upended and challenged by occupation. It is, in my view, one of the most overlooked and underrated films of Spielberg’s career.
Opening in 1941, Shanghai was home to many wealthy British families, while many locals fought for food in an international semi-colonial city on a knife-edge. Shanghai was a city embroiled in conflict, and its wealthy residents sought sanctuary behind high walls, believing they would shield them from the horrors of an ever-expanding, deepening war. For young Jamie (Jim) and his family, those walls are about to come tumbling down as their dream life in the Yangtze River Delta collapses.
As Eleven-year-old Jamie (Christian Bale), a pampered schoolboy with little understanding of the city streets, finds himself alone and vulnerable, he has to adapt, learn, and scheme to find some relative safety in a city where chaos is now in control and class privilege is melting away. As we follow Jim through Japanese prisoner of war camps and toward the blinding light and horror of Nagasaki, Empire of the Sun laces childhood imagination and dreams with terror, uncertainty, and brutality. Jim transforms before our eyes, but he is still a boy with a limited understanding of the events around him and of the loss yet to come.
As Jim’s world grows darker, his parents become a figment of his imagination, and the boy vanishes, only to be replaced by a hardened yet vulnerable young man. Empire of the Sun is Spielberg’s first foray into the horrors of the Second World War and a masterful exploration of a childhood disintegrating amid separation, a need for survival, and a changed social order.
Unlike Jim, many children and young people found themselves facing the horrors of the Second World War in remote rural locations far from cities and towns. Those isolated rural communities are not spared the terror of war. Often, villages become places to hide; places where abuse goes unchallenged as communities become insular, closed environments, fearful of outsiders, as they forge their own rules and social norms. In The Painted Bird, Czech writer-director Václav Marhoul leaves no stone unturned in reflecting on the atrocities of the Second World War in Central Europe and the insular communities that protected some and abused many others.
Based on the controversial and brutal 1965 novel by Jerzy Kosiński, many wondered whether The Painted Bird would, or could ever be, made into a film due to its themes. Our guide through the terror and abuse of rural German-occupied Eastern Europe is a young boy named Joska (Petr Kotlár). Following the death of his elderly aunt, Joska embarks on a journey from village to village, attempting to find safety. But there is no safety to be found for this lost, abused, and isolated boy, who finds himself brought and sold, and beaten and used, on a long and harrowing walk through the hate and oppression that seeps from fascism.
As his journey becomes a trial, Joska’s innocence gives way to his need for survival at any cost as violence and fear consume his young soul. As the final scenes come into view, we know the boy has vanished, replaced by a hollowed-out teenager who will never find peace, internal or external. The Painted Bird reminds us that for many young people, there is no justice, peace or healing following war. Instead, they become silent victims whose lives are forever haunted by experiences no child should face.
As one child’s once-bright eyes become lifeless and pale amid the cruelty and horror surrounding them, The Painted Bird reminds us that armed officers do not lead genocides alone; communities and individuals are also culpable for the horror that unfolds. And that brings us to the final film in our exploration of War Through a Child’s Eyes, the brutal and harrowing Come and See.
Come and See
Elem Klimov’s film is not for the faint-hearted, as he focuses his lens on the horrors that engulfed countless Belarusian villages during the Second World War. In Come and See, genocide, rape and violence are seen through the eyes of a young conscript in the local militia, Flyora. Like Joska in The Painted Bird, Flyora’s journey is apocalyptic in scale and bathed in abject horror as Flyora’s desperate attempts to retain some belief in humanity crumble before our eyes.
The visceral power of Come and See lies in its ability to lace its horror with documentary-like precision as it follows young Flyora through fields, forests, villages and towns of devastation, pain and terror. Aleksei Kravchenko was only fourteen when the film was made, and before our eyes, we watch him age as the war strips him of innocence, submerges him in terror, and mentally rips him apart. By the end, he is practically mute, much like Joska in The Painted Bird, and we, too, are left silent as we attempt to process what we have seen.
Disturbing in its accuracy and horror, which reflect the events of 1943 and 1944, Come and See is a necessary and urgent reminder of one of the darkest chapters in human history. It is a masterpiece of cinema that reminds us of the horror humans are capable of.
As one boy faces the hidden horrors of occupation, another witnesses firsthand the slaughter, hate and inhumanity of a world torn apart by fascism. These powerful films exploring War Through a Child’s Eyes are urgent reminders of the horrors of the past and an even more urgent call to uphold the pledge of “Never Again!” Yet, despite the power of these films, it’s a pledge that feels all too hollow in our modern, fractured world, as bombs continue to rain down on innocent children, and the trauma of war, genocide and hate continues to shape far too many transitions from child to teen and then adult.
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