By Juliana McLeod, News Correspondent
“The Book Thief”: a World War II movie told from the perspective of a little girl who finds her voice through words. Sounds like a spin-off of the heart-wrenching tale of Anne Frank. But it is not, rather far from it actually.
The movie begins in the clouds, above all the characters, above the plot. Then, a voice begins speaking. Yet the voice does not belong to an angel, a godly figure or even a likeable person. The slow, monotonous voice belongs to Death.
This shocking narrator takes up only a morsel of the beginning before stepping aside for Liesel Meminger (Sophie Nélisse). Liesel is the human version of a porcelain doll, seemingly delicate, but a beautiful, petite entity with much more than a pretty face.
Liesel is a Russian child who must leave her internment-bound mother for the German family of Hans and Rosa Hubermann (played by Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson), a battered couple that is living in fear of the Hitler-led society that surrounds them.
Hans is quickly seen as an amiable character, as he swiftly becomes Liesel’s favorite, with his habit of playing the accordion and giggling with Liesel when Rosa gets a bit too tough-skinned. Yet another male lead won over our hearts: Rudy Steiner, (Nico Liersch) Liesel’s future partner-in-crime and eternal companion, as well as a persistent flirt.
The audience receives a taste of one of many comedic moments in the film when Rudy is talking to Liesel on her first day of school and explains that the school bully is not close to being the smartest kid in school, “but he shaves!”
A pattern develops as the men provide the humor in the story, making the females roll their eyes and giving the audience a chuckle in between realizations of the war-scarred lives the characters lead. We especially turn to Rudy for hilarity and sunlight, with his hair so blonde it is almost white. His role makes the increasingly serious aspects of the plot seem less terrifying.
Rosa and Hans are faced with a decision of whether to break the law and risk being taken away in the night. Liesel must find her voice in a time when words could be one’s undoing.
Nélisse manages to portray a decade of ages as her character grows up in the war-torn, German town. Nélisse also successfully manages to portray a girl that is immature and mature at the same time; she is naïve to the consequences of her actions, yet fully understands the pertinence of death in her day-to-day life. She captures the audience’s hearts, not in a way that someone is captured by the cuteness of a child, but in the impressive stance with which she holds herself.
Liesel is a strong, observant girl throughout the film, though she is not the only one. Despite their clashes, it is impressive how similar Rosa and Liesel are. Both are stubborn women who know what they want and are willing to get it, though not at the risk of their loved ones. Nélisse and Watson do not look like they are mother and daughter, but their interactions were spot-on to the tense, but powerful, relationship between a pre-teen and her mother.
Overall, it is impressive how close the film’s script keeps to the book, written by Markus Zusak. The characters portrayed in the film do not abandon the personalities laid out in the story and the same feelings the book arises in the reader are felt while watching the film. It is possible to feel love and hate, desperation and hope, all in the same scene, just as it is possible to do in the same page of the book.
Best of all, the movie’s script does not remove many of the quotes written by Zusak. By doing so, the film maintains the same theme as the book, underlain by the eerie presence of death everywhere.
Though some parts of the movie may have been on the verge of corny, the quality of a movie is defined by how long it stays with an audience. Based on the number of people that flooded to the bathrooms in an attempt to hide their tears, this movie hit a tender spot.
It is the true talent of actors to make their characters come alive, and Hans, Rosa, Rudy and dear Liesel are real.
