Hello!
“One small fact: You are going to die. Despite every effort no one lives forever. Sorry to be such a spoiler. My advice is, when the time comes don’t panic. It doesn’t seem to help.”
I do love to watch movies. A movie night with my love, popcorn, a bottle of good wine is just awesome. Yesterday my husband told me about The Book Thief and I was convinced instantly. Books, thief and a movie that was filmed at the Babelsberg Studios were we have just been is definitely a thumbs up! I have seen many movies about Word War II but none of them kept me glued to the TV like this one.
The first couple of sentences you will hear are by the narrator who is Death himself and spoken by Roger Allam. I think he has just a perfect story-teller voice who is able to captivate the listener instantly. Death talks and looks down from above the clouds to the protagonists. The main actor is young Liesel Meminger (Sophie Nélisse) who sits with her mother and her younger brother in a train. Her brother passes away on this train and Liesel is given to poor foster parents with a new very strict, bad-tempered “mother” Rosa Hubermann (Emily Watson) and a loving good-hearted “father” Hans Hubermann (Geoffrey Rush). Hans calls her “your majesty”. Liesel has just a couple of possessions left and one is a book that she took from her brother’s funeral and just keeps close with her every time she falls asleep at night. What happened to her mother?
There is just a lot of violence around her, especially when she starts school and the teacher and students find out that she cannot read and call her a “Dummkopf” (dunce). Her new father Hans takes care of her and asks her one night while saying goodnight what this book she keeps so dearly is all about. She tells him that she does not know because she cannot read. Together (Hans also has trouble reading) they start reading her book together writing all the words they do not know in alphabetical order on the wall in the basement. From now on, Liesel reads whatever she can get her hands on.
Liesel’s acting is fantastic. From being cute to tough she opens up to Hans more and more. She calls him Papa. On the other hand, her stepmother is mean, curses a lot but throughout the movie it shows that there is a lot of emotional depth to her. Liesel and her neighbor and best friend Rudy Steiner (Nico Liersch) spend a lot of time together and both have to join the Hitler Youth Movement. Everybody in the village has to attend a Nazi Book Burning ceremony and must throw books into the bonfire. When the bonfire ended Liesel takes one book that has not been burned out of the ashes. The mayor’s wife observes this. Things take a twist now, especially after the foster parents take in the Jewish refugee Max because of a favor Hans owes to a soldier comrade who saved his life.
As many movies on World War II, this one has a plethora of dark material of the Holocaust, the Night of the Broken Glass and more historic context and is very well documented. I highly recommend this movie. It is a must-see for anybody who wants to learn and see historic and human drama of the German Nazi era and to remember who the first victims were.
Order The Book Thief in paperback here or click here for the German version. The movie can be found to rent or purchase here. Enjoy!
Have you watched The Book Thief? What is/are your favorite movie(s) that you can recommend? I would love to hear from you.
Thank you for reading my blog.
