Immaculate film-making

Rating: 9/10 (5 December 2015)

Well worthy of being watched in a pair with "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" (which is perhaps even a greater and deeper, if more harrowing film), "The Book Thief" tells us more about that hitherto rather rare being, the on-screen "good German". Here several appear, only to be dispatched into the embrace of Death (in fact a key character in the film, played by Roger Allam, who also narrates) - most likely by a British bomb. Like "The Boy...", this film also reminds us that, while kids did indeed have to grow up fast in Hitler's Germany, that did not mean that there was no such thing as a childhood at all. The heroine in the film - an extremely sweet and persuasive Sophie Nelisse as Liesel - would like finally to have a childhood, having seen her brother die at the time when she was being given away - for her own safety - by her communist mother. And coming to a smallish Bavaria-like town, she now has the chance to do this, in the care of doting foster father Hans and ostensibly-severe foster mother Rosa, conveyed splendidly as characters (almost by underacting) by Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson. As is noted in the film itself, these main three characters are at the outset of their time together ordinary in the extreme, itself an extraordinary thing in Nazi Germany! Later the tension goes up a notch or two as they devote many months to the concealment of a young Jewish man (a fine role for Ben Schnetzer), as "Papa" makes good his promise to help out the family of the fellow soldier who saved his life during World War I (shades here of yet another fine film, by the way, this time one originating as a play, rather than a book, i.e. "Good" of 2008, starring Viggo Mortensen). In "The Book Thief", a number of profound and often moving insights are to be gained through a repeated focus on the relevance and importance of words and books, hence the title. This is all the more relevant given that a key way in which Liesel's young life is (sort of) put back on track is through her painstaking learning to read in the company of stepfather Hans. Like several successful films, this one has a story set slightly on the margins of huge events, being in this way left free to make its points without too much of the clutter that inevitably impacts upon more "epic" productions. Doubtless the book on which the film was based was good too, but that is not for me to say, given that I have not read it. The film tells a super story, is well-acted, full of truth and enlightenment, and is extremely nicely made. If one really wanted to say something about English with strong German accents interspersed with an occasional "ja", "nein" or "und" one could do so, but for me that would be pointless pedantry. To not get at least some worthwhile and enlightening experience out of this touching and meaningful film is tantamount to having a heart of stone...