MYST POST #2: THE BOOK THIEF

                                                      

I am typically not a fan of movies surrounding wars, and especially ones that are adaptions of books, because regardless of the directing, they never seem to come out the way you pictured them in your head. I prefer the happy sappy movies that leave you feeling good and leaving the theater buoyant and blissful. However, this weekend I decided to watch the movie the Book Thief, and give it a chance. The movie takes place in Germany during World War II and it is about a young girl named Liesel who is given up for adoption because her mom was a communist and gets taken away. The movie starts out being narrated by none other than Death himself, and it has a very catchy intro. Liesel's younger brother dies during the trip to their "new" family, and you can tell she is a troubled girl already. However, her new father Hans and Liesel bond immediately over books and music. Her mother however seems to be very bitter and is always screaming, but after a while we see that she is a good person at heart. Liesel becomes close friends with her neighbor Rudy Steiner who later gets drafted into training because he proves to be a very fast runner. Liesel learns how to read, and finds solace in her books which she finds and takes. The plot of the movie is that Liesel's family is German and her father, Hans, had fought in a war with a Jewish man who sacrificed his life for Hans'. He promises the Jewish family, that if ever they needed anything he would forever be indebted to them. So in the middle of the night, a dark haired man comes knocking on their door by the name of Max, and asks for shelter. Hans explains to Liesel that no one can know about the man staying in their basement, that she must guard this secret with her life. Liesel becomes very close with Max who teaches her to use her words to tell stories, and bring the words she learns from her books to life. Max becomes ill, and the war thickens, soon the Nazi guards are checking basements and after a close encounter and Liesel's family almost getting caught they reluctantly send Max on his way. The movie ends with an explosion destroying the town and robbing Hans and Rosa (Liesel's parents) of their lives, as well as her neighbor and best friend Rudy. Liesel however, having fallen asleep in the basement where she writes and reads survives and goes to live with the Mayor and his wife who she had continuously visited during the movie to read books and towards the end would sneak in and steal books, hence, her name as the "book thief".

      The camera work in this movie was very interesting as there were a lot of high shots and low shots, it seemed that whenever the narrator was speaking the angle was high in the sky looking down. A few times in the movie, such as the scene where everyone is hiding and Max (the jewish boy they are hiding) comes outside and is spinning under the stars, the camera spins along with him, giving the effect a dizzy happy feeling. Also the movie had quite a few dark scenes, or scenes that were lit simply by candlelight, especially the basement scenes and the night scenes where you expected them to get caught hiding someone in their house. However, there were a few very bright scenes, such as whenever Liesel would take laundry to the mayors house, maybe this was used as a foreshadowing effect as a clue that the Mayor's wife would later end up saving Liesel. Also when the books were burned, it was a dark scene that used the technique of lighting up the cast's faces with the flames, creating a dramatic dark effect. I thought the camera work was done very effectively.

      

                                                         

The director of this movie, Brian Percival, was not someone I was familiar with prior to this movie. However, after I watched it I looked up some other movies he directed, such as A Boy called Dad, About a Girl, Gracie,  and a few others. He has only about seven other movies, because his main focus is in television. The main girl Liesel is played by Sophie Nelisse, a Canadian actress who has won many awards for her performances in Monsieur Lazhar. I thought it was interesting that for a movie that is based off of a novel, they used a lot of actors that are not very known. None of the actors were people that you typically see playing in big movies, and even though this wasn't a huge blockbuster, it still did pretty well according to reviews and made around $21 million world-wide. I think the movie wasn't as successful just because the theme of the movie is World War II Germany, and its a plot that has been very over done in the past, and its also something that comes up so often I don't think the public is going to see different angles and perspectives of a time we all wish didn't happen. 

                                                             

       I think the scene that stood out the most to me would probably be the one where everyone is hiding in the part of town that is used for the saftey of bombs being dropped, and Hans is playing music, and while everyone is hiding, Max comes outside for a brief moment and is happy and unafraid. He is just looking up at the stars in awe, displaying that even through all the sadness and horrible events that surround him and everyone else in that time period, there was still beauty in the world and things to be grateful for, such as the stars and the fresh air. It was a very emotional scene, where not much talking is going on and its very open for interpretation, but I think it portrayed a positive light on the darker scenes of the movie, and kind of made it a little less sad. I think the scene was important because it not only showed that it was hard for the German family to be hiding a Jewish man, but that it was also hard being Max and feeling as if he was a burden and causing unnecessary danger to a good family. The scene portrayed a lot of character, and really showed the personality of Max which you don't get much throughout the movie because he is a quiet character, and when he wasn't sick and sleeping, he was usually talking just to Liesel.
                                              

                                                      

      Overall, I didn't particularly like the movie despite the fact that it wasn't as sad as most Holocaust movies, it made you feel sad because half of the main characters end up passing by the end of the movie, leaving Liesel without a family, yet again. The movie was, however, interesting because it kind of goes full circle, while the whole time being narrated by death and it ends with death saying that it is the one that is haunted by humans, despite the fact that its what humans are avoiding and running from all their lives. I give the movie one thumb down, because regardless of it taking a different spin on the war, and telling it from a unusual perspective, it ended in a way that kind of made you feel like you wasted your time watching and feeling for all these characters who just end up dying. The directing, and acting was very well done though, and they definitely picked a good cast for the movie. I don't recommend watching this movie if you don't like the main characters dying and leaving you feeling with a "now what.." type of feeling.