Extremely touching

Rating: 10/10 (26 March 2014)

The Book Thief is an extremely touching movie. It is sweet and will make you smile but it is also tragic and will make you cry. The movie asks you to contemplate questions about the ultimate meaning of the actions we take in life. If you make a mistake in a situation of extraordinary danger, that puts your life or the lives of others at risk, but it was not really a mistake because your conscience, your humanity, demanded that you do it, and you or others ultimately end up dying as a result of that, what is the meaning of that, in light of the fact that, ultimately everybody dies? The fact that everyone ultimately dies is central to the story, and you know it, because the movie starts with Death as the narrator, talking about how, eventually, everybody dies. The movie does not give you a handy answer to this question. You have to answer it for yourself.
Since this is too short, I have been looking at what everyone else has been saying, so I will comment a bit on that. A lot of the criticisms seem to me like unimportant nitpicks -- the historical inaccuracies, the accents, and so on. Sure, it is true that the way certain characters die is not realistic or historically accurate, probably, but in war who lives and dies is very random and the movie wants you to think about that. I am completely happy with all the performances of all the actors and actresses, and don't mind that the accents or the odd German word are not perfect, or that not everything is historically accurate. The visual style of the film is very beautiful. No film is perfect but I have no qualms whatsoever about giving this film 10 out of 10 stars -- for me it is perfect enough. Never mind the imperfections and think about the deep questions of life's meaning that the film is asking you to think about.
I will always love this movie.