This might just be a coincidence, but lately there’s been an influx of films and shows centering around the Holocaust. Be it the Anthony Hopkins starrer One Life (2023) or Peacock’s Harvey Keitel-led drama The Tattooist of Auschwitz (2023), Apple TV’s million-dollar epic Masters of the Air (2023), or Jonathan Glazer’s stunningly impactful The Zone of Interest (2023), there have been a lot of holocaust stories. Now I’m not going to go into whether this is a good or bad thing, but I do believe it’s really hard to top The Zone of Interest, considering the kind of astonishingly original thing the movie managed to pull off when it comes to Holocaust storytelling. That said, Rebecca Snow’s The Boy in the Woods, the most recent Holocaust movie to fall on us, does work. The USP of it has to be it being a story that is small in terms of scale and told from the perspective of a twelve-year-old boy. In a way, the film even works as a finely made survival drama.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens in the Movie?
The Jewish population of the Polish city of Buczacz is either being decimated or being taken to the concentration camps. Just when twelve-year-old Max is about to be pushed into one of the trucks headed to one of the gulags, his mother urges him to run away at any cost. Max listens to her and manages to flee, leaving his mother and little sister Zonia behind. Following his escape, Max finds his aunt Erna, his next go-to person after his mother. Fearing Max wouldn’t be safe in the city, Erna sends him to live on a farm in the countryside with a working-class family. The family patriarch, Jasko, is a simple man who takes in Max in exchange for money from his aunt. His young wife, Kaisa, welcomes Max with open arms. The boy bonds with Jasko and Kaisa’s infant daughter Broni and adapts to the farm life in no time. To avoid any suspicion, Jasko decides that Max should pose as his sister’s son Staszek, whose father’s dead and whose mother has volunteered to go to Germany as a laborer. Life at the farm is pretty mundane and uneventful for Max, other than the fact that he misses his mother and sister a lot. Jasko and Kaisa are really nice to him though, even though they’re housing him for the money. But soon, the money stops coming as Erna gets caught by the Nazis. Max continues to live at the farm though, which only proves Jasko and Kaisa are inherently good people.
Why Does Jasko Ask Max To Live In The Woods?
A visit from the police rattles Jasko enough to tell Max that he shouldn’t live with the family anymore. Not that anything happens, as Max not only maintains his cover but he also sells his story extremely well to the chief inspector; but then Jasko almost gets killed thanks to having fresh vegetables at the stable (something that’s not allowed). After that, he deems Max staying at the farm is too risky. So he takes Max to the woods nearby, finds him a hiding place, and tells him all about what to eat and what not to, and how to survive. Max is confused and scared, but he also realizes that Jasko is doing this purely out of fear, and the man can’t be blamed. Despite Jasko’s instant lesson, Max doesn’t have it easy in the woods. Foraging for food turns out to be a struggle, and so does lighting a fire and staying warm. What’s even worse is the loneliness he experiences and the fear of his mother and sister fading from his memory, given he doesn’t have a picture of them. But even after all this, Max keeps surviving. Be it the bouts of rain or the Jew hunters, he gets through it all—without complaining much.Â
Who is Yanek, and What Does He Want?
If this wasn’t a true story, there probably would have been theories about how the character of Yanek is not real. However, considering we see Max actually talking about Yanek (during the end credits), I’m not going to indulge in those. Yanek is a little boy Max randomly comes across in the woods. Possibly a year or two younger than Max, Yanek has also been left by his parents (who most definitely got caught) to survive in the open. Max and Yanek instantly become friends, and finally, after a long time, life starts feeling seemingly normal for Max. In fact, the two of them pretty much build a world of their own—a world that’s filled with stories and fueled by a dream of having a future where they’re living together. Max is an artist, and Yanek is his best friend’s assistant. The duo does face occasional hitches—like Max once getting caught by a low-level police officer and even taken to the town—but thanks to the intervention of this kind-hearted woman, Regina, he gets away, that too with a chicken. Another time, Max and Yanek are chased by the Jew hunters and have a really close shave.
One day, Max and Yanek hear a lot of gunshots while hiding in their cave. After getting out, they see a lot of dead bodies around. Max is smart enough to ask Yanek to take the clothes and shoes of the dead, as it’s in the middle of a freezing winter. On the other side of a river nearby, Max sees someone moving. Sensing the person might not be dead, Max bravely crosses the river with the help of Yanek. Sadly, the person turns out to be a dead woman. But as fate would have it, they find a baby, alive and well. Yanek hesitates for all the practical reasons in the world, but how can these two leave a baby behind? Max takes the baby, and he returns by crossing the river, again with the help of Yanek. Upon coming back to their hideout, though, they realize that they can’t keep the baby. So Max decides to hand the baby over to the only good people he knows—Jasko and his family. Yanek, meanwhile, catches a really bad cold due to staying in wet clothes in that chilly weather. It’s absolutely heartbreaking that saving a life costs Yanek his own life. Max obviously didn’t see it coming, and he can’t help but to blame himself.
Does Max Survive In The End?
In The Boy in the Woods‘ ending, after Yanek’s death, Jasko takes Max back again. He doesn’t want Max to live in the woods anymore. The war is also about to end, and the Nazis are on the verge of retreating. Once Poland comes under the control of the Soviet Union, the Jews have no reason to hide anymore. Max is free, after all. He never got the opportunity to see his mother and sister, though. It was a nice touch for the director to show real-life Max in the end credits—that too him meeting the baby he and Yanek once saved in the woods. The baby, now a really old and frail woman, couldn’t even speak, but Max does find his closure. Yanek may have died years ago, but he did save a life after all. Max couldn’t be more proud of his late friend, as he should be.
