The book thief



THE BOOK THIEF

 The Book Thief is a 2013 American-German war drama film directed by Brian Percival and starring Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, and Sophie Nélisse. The film is based on the 2005 novel “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 PLOT

In 1938, the young girl Liesel Meminger is traveling by train with her mother and her younger brother when he dies. Her mother buries the boy in a cemetery by the tracks and Liesel picks up a book, "The Gravediggers Handbook", which was left on the grave of her brother and brings it with her. Liesel is delivered to a foster family in a small town and later she learns that her mother left her because she is a communist. Her stepmother, Rosa Hubermann, is a rude but caring woman and her stepfather, Hans Hubermann, is a simple kind-hearted man. Liesel made friend with her next door neighbor, the boy Rudy Steiner, and they go together to school. When Hans discovers that Liesel can’t read, he teaches her using her book and Liesel becomes an obsessed reader. During a Nazi speech where the locals are forced to burn books in a bonfire, Liesel recovers one book for her and the Major's wife Ilsa Hermann witnesses her action. Meanwhile Hans hides the Jewish Max Vandenburg, who is the son of a deceased friend that saved his life in the war, in the basement of his house and Liesel becomes his friend. One day, Rosa asks Liesel to deliver laundry to the Major and Ilsa invites Liesel to go to her library and tells that she can visit her to read whenever she wants. But in times of war there are many threats and the lives of Liesel, her family and friends will never be the same.

 

REVIEW

 

Markus Zusak’s enormously successful young-adult novel seems to have been adapted as a movie for middle-aged children. The brute facts of the Second World War in Germany—Nazi oppression, hunger, people hiding in basements—have been turned into a pleasantly meaningless tale of good-heartedness, complete with soft lyrical touches and a whimsical appearance, as a narrator, by Death, who should have laid this movie to rest. The picture was shot at the Babelsberg Studio, in Berlin; the set reveals a small German city (which is mysteriously bombed by the Allies) where it always seems to be softly snowing, as inside an old snow globe. Sophie Nélisse plays the young Liesel, an abandoned child; Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson are her kindly adoptive parents; Oliver Stokowski plays a handsome young Jew in hiding who encourages Liesel to write. Directed by Brian Percival.

(from “The New Yorker”)

 Giulia Truzzi e Jessica Inversani