A few good Germans

Rating: 8/10 (18 March 2014)

The trailer for THE BOOK THIEF made it look like a new take on the Anne Frank story, but it's both more and less than that. The movie, like the novel on which it's based, targets Young Adults, so there's an element of Holocaust 'Lite' about it (as in last month's THE MONUMENTS MEN): the cinematography adds a glossy sheen to the horrors of World War Two. Nevertheless, we are shown Jews being beaten up in the street and marched off to the camps, so young viewers are not spared the ugly face of history. Having the story narrated by the Grim Reaper is an interesting device.
If Liesel, our heroine (Sophie Nelisse), is perhaps a little too cutesy, her adoptive parents (Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson) are almost pantomine characters: the loving father and the flinty mother with a soft centre. All three actors were coached to do German accents of the "Ve have vays of makink you talk" variety, which is seriously overdone and comes close to undermining the seriousness of the theme. But the central message of the story - not all Germans at that time were Jew- hating Nazi thugs - is delivered touchingly, if sentimentally. War brings out the best - as well as the worst - in people.