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Sophie Nelisse is The Book Thief in this worthy, dull adaptation |
Director: Brian Percival
Cast: Geoffrey Rush (Hans Hubermann), Sophie Nélisse
(Liesel Meminger), Emily Watson (Rosa Hubermann), Nico Liersch (Rudy Steiner),
Ben Schnetzer (Max Vanderberg), Heike Makatsch (Liesel’s mother), Barbara Auer
(Ilsa Hermann), Roger Allam (Death)
Every year you get prestigious film versions of novels that
have soared up the bestseller lists. Some of these are good or even great
films. Other are so lifeless, listless and lacking in spirit they leave you
wondering what on earth people got so fussed about the original for. That’s the
case here with The Book Thief.
In late 1930s Munich, young Liesel (Sophie Nélisse)
is fostered with a local decorator Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and his wife Rosa
(Emily Watson). Liesel has a fascination with books – despite not being able to
read and write – and soon Hans is teaching her literacy. Liesel has a
compulsion to “borrow” books – first from a burning pile of Nazi forbidden
tomes, then from the library of the wife of the local mayor. But it’s dangerous
to draw too much attention to the family, particularly when they are hiding a
young Jewish man, Max (Ben Schnetzer).
I’ve not read The Book
Thief. I can’t say that I feel the need to dash out and do so after this
bland, middle of the road picture that makes Fascist Germany seem very
picturesque. The film largely fails, like so many films before it, to translate
the joy of reading into a visual language so the whole “book thief” concept of
the title quickly gets pushed to the margins in favour of a series of episodic
events based around Nazi Germany and Second World War tropes that already feel
a bit tired.
Percival’s award-baiting film doesn’t seem like it wants to
bring (or is capable of bringing) something unique or interesting to the
setting, instead going through the motions as prettily as possible. And the
film does look great, I will give it that. It also sounds pretty damn good, not
least through a playful and rich score from John Williams (his first original
score for a non-Spielberg film for decades). But it never really gets anything
special from the content. In fact, that very chocolate-box beauty of the film seems
to run contrary to the setting of Nazi Germany. The awards-friendly beauty envelops
the film like treacle.
The book was written from the prospective of Death, but, the
film seems to drop this unique aspect as soon as it possibly can. Again, it’s a
sign that the film cannot reproduce what worked in the book – by stripping out
its most unique and interesting point, it makes the film feel as generic as it
possibly can. Roger Allam is a wonderful choice as the richly voiced narrator –
but he’s so rarely used in the film that when Death talks about how fascinating
he found Liesel you are simply left wondering why.
In fact that why
is a real problem with the film – it’s what you’ll be asking all the way
through. Why? Why is anything really happening? Why is Death telling us how
different and striking this story is when everything we see in the film feels
pretty familiar? What is the point of this film or the message it is trying to
give us? For a film that tackles war, fascism, persecution of the Jews, and childhood
innocence, it seems empty all the time.
And that’s the problem with the film. It’s all about the
pretty presentation. The characters speak with forced German accents that make
it feel even more like a pretty Hollywood Golden Age film. (By the way the bad
Germans, like the Nazis, they speak only in German. Make of that what you
will.) The acting is pretty good, Sophie Nélisse is a great find as the
heroine. But there is nothing special about it at all. It’s seemingly made
entirely as a prestige product for potentially winning Oscars. Any of the
depths of uniqueness of the book seems to have been shaved off in service of
that, and we’ve been left with a chocolate box that feels like it’s lacking the
sweet richness you’d expect to find in it.
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