Endurance.

Rating: 7/10 (3 April 2015)

A young girl named Liesel, Sophie Nélisse, grows up in Hitler's Germany and loses almost everything she cares about, yet she endures.
The movie is narrated by Death. You have to handle Death carefully otherwise it turns into a cliché. Ingmar Bergman barely got away with it. Here, we don't actually SEE that narrator but his soothing voice is nice to listen to. He has a touch of humanity and a wry wit. On Liesl's childhood friend, Nico Liersch, "His soul rolled into my arms very lightly." On Liesel's frowning mother, "I caught her in mid-snore." Next time, try making Death a woman, preferably one resembling my high school girl friend, Agnes De Groot.
You have to be careful about Nazi Germany and the Jews too, or it turns into something much worse than a cliché. It becomes a cheap shot at breaking hearts.
"The Book Thief" has a young Jew in it, who shelters for a time in the basement of Liesel's father (Geoffrey Rush) and plump mother (Emily Watson). Liesel and Max become friends and Max teaches her to read.
The movie, despite its over-used theme, is made for perceptive adults who don't need a kick in the pants to feel empathy for the suffering of the characters. The Nazis aren't all snarling beasts but at their best they're no more than men doing routine jobs. Nobody turns from a nice guy into a rabid Gestapo officer. Max doesn't get caught and crucified, which spares us another tour of the unspeakable camps. In fact, he walks off into the night and survives the war.
Liesl's family, on the other hand, dies in a night-time bombing raid, along with Liesl's boy friend, Nico Liersch. Yet, though we see a row of houses disappear silently into a garden of flames, when the bodies are dug out they are already dead and gray. Only Liersch has time to gasp out an attempt at a declaration of love while lying in Liesel's arms but he (or the director) gives up and he rolls his head to the side and dies a Hollywood death.
It's a sensitive movie. It's not challenging like "The Tin Drum." It's easily grasped because it's sentimental. But it is not insulting. Given the subject, for that reason alone it deserves a prize. It's a movie about people, not about cardboard cut outs.