Movie Review of The Book Thief
Starring: Sophie Nélisse, Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson Director: Brian Percival
A story told through the eyes of a young girl, “The Book Thief” is a movie about the Holocaust and is based on the 2006 best-selling novel of the same title by Australian author Markus Zusak. In the background of Hitler’s Germany, nine year old Liesel, due to her birth mother’s communist past is adopted by a poor family right before the beginning of World War II so that her mother can escape. Before she is even able to read, she develops a special relationship with books and because of her step father’s loving and unique way of bringing her up, she becomes infatuated with anything that has to do with books, and stories. Until one day the atrocities of the war bring Max, a Jewish fugitive in Liesel’s doorstep and her family decides to hide him in their basement.
Although most performances and especially the ones by Geoffrey Rush and the young Sophie Nelisse are brilliant and moving, the movie fails to live up to the book’s expectations. Although it seems as if attentions has been given to all the details concerning the music (soundtrack of the movie is by the genius John Williams), the entire aesthetic of Berlin in war, the Percival’s direction, it feels as if something is missing that will bring all these elements together, in order for this story to be told and attract as many fans as the book did. The movie has a sense of quality and artistic order and is characterised by a deeply moving depiction of humanity but at the same time it seems a bit of a cliché. While it is good, it could have been excellent.
Words by Maria E