The Book Thief *** (2013, Sophie Nélisse, Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, Nico Liersch) – Movie Review

Ontario-born Sophie Nélisse stars as the spirited and courageous young German girl Liesel, who is subjected to the horrors of World War Two Germany and is sent to live with a foster family. She finds comfort in this terrible situation by stealing books and sharing them with others. But, under the stairs in her new home, her adoptive parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann (Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson), are dangerously sheltering a Jewish refugee.

Based on the beloved bestselling book, adapted by Michael Petroni, The Book Thief tells the inspiring and uplifting story of a girl who transforms the lives of everyone around her, including a young boy, Rudy Steiner (Nico Liersch).

This is a gorgeous-looking film, with a brilliant surface, thanks to Florian Ballhaus’s amazing cinematography, Simon Elliott’s gorgeous period production designs and Bill Crutcher’s eye-catching art direction. It couldn’t look better. This, though, is both an attraction and a problem, as it is at odds with the hateful realism of the Nazi era background of the story. John Williams’s soupy score is wrong for it too.

And maybe Rush and Watson are wrong too, very fine actors though they are. They look grungy and ordinary enough, but their attempt to seem German by adding the odd ‘ja’ into English dialogue and strapping on a ‘German’ accent to English dialogue just makes them seem fake and phony. Their crucial performances don’t work as well as they should or as well as you’d expect from these two actors.

I can see The Book Thief working affectingly as a bestselling book, but as a movie it’s an uncomfortable experience. Of course, this is always a problem with Nazi films, where simply filming these events produces a worry. There are similar issues with Life Is Beautiful, Cabaret and even Schindler’s List. Are these films too glossy, too optimistic, too unreal, compared with what was really happening in Germany back then?

Nevertheless, well-meaning and good-hearted as it is, The Book Thief has a lot of virtues, and it does work in a Life Is Beautiful kind of way. Harsh realism meets glossy escapism, it’s a way to try to survive, like the characters in the stories do. It helps a lot that Sophie Nélisse and Nico Liersch are so confident and expert, despite their youth, unexpectedly outacting the adults. It’s Liesel’s story, after all.

Director Brian Percival won an Emmy and Bafta award for the 2010 episode one of Downton Abbey.

Roger Allam provides the voice of the Narrator / Death.

http://derekwinnert.com/life-is-beautiful-la-vita-e-bella-classic-film-review-415/

http://derekwinnert.com/schindlers-list-classic-film-review-80/

http://derekwinnert.com/cabaret-classic-film-review-206/

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com