The Book Thief
2013
**½
Director: Brian Percival
Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Sophie Nélisse, Emily Watson, Ben Schnetzer, Nico Liersch, Sandra Nedeleff, Hildegard Schroedter, Rafael Gareisen, Barbara Auer, Levin Liam, Roger Allam
In 1938, young Liesel arrives in a small German village to live with her adoptive parents, who are a bit of a mixed bag. Liesel, who is drawn to books and storytelling, is shaped by the rise of National Socialism and the subsequent war when her family shelters a Jewish man named Max in their basement. This adaptation of Markus Zusak's novel is well-acted and handsomely mounted, but terribly captivating or believable it is not. Brian Percival must tackle the age old question: how to make an English language film about events which occur in German. Should the cast just speak English with their own accents, English with German accents, English with the occasional German word, or actual German? Percival's solution is to use all of these options simultaneously. That is a silly and distracting choice for a WW2 drama which is flat and uneventful to begin with. This must also be one of the most non-horrific portrayals of the Nazi era. It's an awful period of history, but Liesel, her family, her best friend, and Max all get off lightly, at least as far as the Nazis are concerned.
