'The Book Thief' Steals Hearts _ and Opens Minds

Rating: Null/10 (6 April 2014)

Australian author Markus Zusak's novel, "The Book Thief," was an international best-seller, but its film adaptation inexplicably soared (there's no other word) under the radar during its release in 2013 (one Oscar nomination _ for John Williams' score). It deserves better.
The two-hour-eleven-minute PG drama flies by, which is unusual for a story of this intensity.
With elements of "The Diary of Anne Frank," "Life Is Beautiful" and "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," as well as of "Au Revoir, les Enfants" and "The Pianist," it would be easy and convenient to write off "The Book Thief" as derivative, been-there-done-that twaddle designed to tug at the heartstrings and maybe pick up some awards along the way. The Nazis, after all, make easy targets (as well they should).
But thanks to director Brian Percival and smooth, underplayed narration by "Death" (Roger Allam, who plays the droll DI Fred Thursday on the "Inspector Morse" prequel "Endeavour"), you're pulled into the story from the git-go, and before you know it, you've more or less standing in the well-worn shoes of the story's protagonist, young Liesel Meminger (Sophie Nelisse), an adopted girl on the verge of adolescence who is fostered by the Hubermann family after her father "abandons" her own brood and her mother is forced to give her up.
The Hubermanns _ and Sophie _ live on Himmel Street (Heaven Street) in Germany as the country is swallowed whole by Nazism. At one point the Hubermanns take in and hide in the basement Max Vandenburg, a young Jew, the son of a man who saved the life of the Hubermann patriarch, Hans (Geoffrey Rush), in World War I.
The linchpin of the story is Sophie's inability to read upon her arrival into the family. Hans begins to teach her, and then her "education" is aided and abetted by a most unlikely source. The opening of her eyes, and mind, in a culture now dedicated to the closure of both is an apt metaphor that works surprisingly and remarkably well.
The devil is in the details in any historical drama, especially one whose subject matter, Nazism, has been plowed so often, but director Percival and this sterling, deep cast are more than up to the task.
While Rush and Emily Watson (as Hans Hubermann's wife, Rosa) are unquestionably the strong underpinnings of the story, the film rises or falls on the narrow, schoolgirl shoulders of Nelisse's Liesel. The young Ontario-born actress is, simply put, wondrous in the role. One can't imagine the film existing at all, much less succeeding, without her.
This is a good one. Just be prepared to haul out the hanky, no matter what you tell yourself otherwise at the outset. It's more than worth it.