Two Devastating Movie Endings...No Happily Ever After

I watched two movies with riveting endings. In fact one might say they were devastating.

The first was "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" based on a book by Irish novelist John Boyne. It is about a special friendship between two boys and their perspective experience of the Holocaust.

"Suspect X" is also about a special friendship. Based on a book by 東野 圭吾 Keigo Higashino , one of my favorite Japanese authors, its touches on a tragic love affair that never quite got started, but ends immediately in tragedy. Perhaps the movie producers should have kept the original title of the book for the movie version " (容疑者Xの献身). It would have been so much more appropriate. For it is a story about sacrifice.

In fact both books and movies revolved around sacrifices.

In "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas", the Jews were sacrificed in the name of evil. In "Suspect X", a mathematical genius sacrificed himself.

Tragically, both sacrifices were in vain.