Asa Butterfield as Bruno, a young German boy, befriends a boy named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) who wears “striped pajamas” and lives on what Bruno’s parents tell their son is a farm.

Miramax / David Lukacs

With The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, writer-director Mark Herman attempts to do on film what John Boyne did on the printed page in his 2006 novel: confront the horror of the Holocaust in a story aimed primarily at older children (the movie is being released under the Disney banner in the U.K.).

The film’s PG-13 rating is a good indicator of the appropriate age for younger audiences, although older viewers should brace themselves, too. Even though it unfolds almost entirely through a child’s eyes, and contains no onscreen violence, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas packs as devastating a punch as an adult-oriented drama about the subject. Its concluding five minutes are almost impossible to watch.

But that, of course, is the point of the story, which begins in Berlin in the early stages of World War II, when the wide-eyed, 8-year-old German boy named Bruno (the remarkable Asa Butterfield) learns his military father (David Thewlis) has received a promotion that requires the family to move to “the countryside,” away from all his friends.

The family’s new home is remote, drab and gray, almost fortress-like. Bruno complains about not having anyone to play with except his sister (Amber Beattie), and she’s no fun. And when he asks his mother (Vera Farmiga) about the nearby “farm” he can glimpse from a corner of his bedroom window — a farm where everyone wears striped pajamas — she immediately tells him to forget about all that and forbids him to ever go near there.

But a child’s curiosity cannot be stopped, and soon Bruno is spending his afternoons talking through an electrified wire fence with a jug-eared little boy named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), who lives on the farm with his father, wears the same odd pajamas and is constantly asking him to bring back some food.

Director Herman rarely pulls us out of Bruno’s naïve view of the world, which adds a layer of unsettling ominousness to scenes such as the one in which Bruno asks his father what that horrible smell coming from the farm’s chimneys is (“They burn rubbish there sometimes,” his dad replies).

Despite its focus on children, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas shrewdly keeps us apprised of how the adults in the story are responding to their new environment. The better he does at his job, the more short-tempered and emotionally distant Bruno’s father seems to become, illustrating how many Nazi soldiers lost their perspective — and their souls — as the German army’s power grew.

Bruno notices his mother’s increasingly nervous, restless moods, and he’s struck, too, by how his sister has started covering the walls of her room with Nazi paraphernalia and Hitler posters. But mostly Bruno just concentrates on finding new ways to play with his friend. By maintaining its focus on its child protagonist, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas lulls you into the false security of an innocent’s worldview, helping its finale — which is accompanied by a magnificently harrowing score by James Horner — achieve its pulverizing power.

The movie might result in some difficult questions from children about the events of the Holocaust, but they are conversations well worth having.

****The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Vera Farmiga, David Thewlis, Jack Scanlon, Rupert Friend, Amber Beattie.

Rated: PG-13, strong adult themes.