Liesel meets her two foster parents Hans and Rosa ( Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson) and is almost immediately befriended by the little blonde boy next door, Rudy ( Nico Liersch). I guess it was a good move because I had forgotten. Instead Death shows up at the beginning and end and at a strange, out-of-nowhere moment somewhere near the middle as if to remind us “he” was even part of the story. We realize almost immediately this is the voice of Death ( Roger Allam) and I say it “attempts to ease us into the story” because it never quite feels right, largely given the narration isn’t all throughout the film. We watch these early portions of the story play out as a gentle voice attempts to ease us into the story. Liesel has just buried her younger brother and her mother had to give her up for reasons that become vaguely clear, but are never explicitly mentioned. The story follows a young girl named Liesel, played wonderfully by Sophie Nélisse with large sympathetic eyes and a heart-warming smile. At one point I scribbled down on my notepad, “Can’t get away from the ugliness,” as director Brian Percival seemed to struggle against telling the story he wanted to tell and injecting the necessary WWII cliches he felt needed to be included. Considering the massive length of the original novel (550+ pages), there was no way it was all going to make it onto the screen and those holes are felt.Ĭharacters will pop up to serve some small purpose, such as a young German antagonist whose only purpose seems to be to either bully two of the film’s leads or remind us (as if we’d forgotten) this is early 1940s Germany we’re living in. With The Book Thief, adapted by Michael Petroni ( The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) from Markus Zusak‘s highly acclaimed 2006 novel, I found myself flip-flopping between feelings of necessity and what seemed to be a presumed obligation. What is it that sets one film apart from the next? You can probably quickly rattle off ten such WWII films that accomplish the exact same goal, some better than others, some great and some you’d prefer never hearing from again. It has its share of villains, aggressive speeches, Jews hiding in basements and a core set of protagonists with large hearts and strong performances. Being a World War II film, it ticks off plenty of the expected boxes and plays heavily on the horrors of life amid air raids, fear of speaking your opinion in the open or even smiling. The biggest question The Book Thief faces is to wonder why it’s a story worth telling at all.
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