The Book Thief

Some people criticize that the film is too naive and sentimental, that it has an unbelievable view of war, that it's typical Hollywood kitsch, and so on. We must realize that The Book Thief is a stylized spectacle, where we observe the horrors and cruelty of war and Nazi orders through the eyes of a child who approaches the threshold of adolescence and platonic love during the narration but does not cross it. There is a certain naivety and innocence that pertains to this age. The story is not particularly innovative, but the execution is fine, the director knows how to play with details and is able to work with chilling poetry in certain places. In addition, the cast is quite luxurious, Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson are among the best in their categories that film studios can hire, and even though I had a small problem with Sophie Nélisse, I cannot deny that she has a certain charm. Yes, the film wants to move you, but you don't have to be ashamed of being moved by it. If American studio productions were always like this, then we could congratulate ourselves. Overall impression: 75%. (16/08/2017)

On paper, this film must come across as a disproportionately drawn-out and highly sentimental amalgamation of all the clichés one can recall from stories about evil Nazis and the power of friendly values in times of war. But I confess that I found the final form, its effective narrative strategies, the performances, the approach to the viewer and the way the film presents itself so unobtrusively yet compulsively impressive that I have to subjectively increase the lower objective rating. On the poetically ironic commentary of an unusual narrator, on the light tones of Williams's soundtrack, and on the purely humanistic messages through the lens of uncorrupted human souls, I rode comfortably to a powerful cinematic experience that may be too pleasant given the gravity of the subject matter, but what it wants to convey, it conveys effectively and without fail. (16/10/2016)

Everything you wanted to re-watch for the thousandth time about the Nazis and their victims, in a transparent and sentimental package with another ultra-fragile music score by John Williams. Innocent children, a good-natured Jew in hiding, a papa with a big heart and a caring mom. Everybody loves each other very much while maintaining family values, but unfortunately there’s the Gestapo knocking on their door... A nicely filmed mainstream tearjerker. Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson are worthy of a higher form of cinematic art. (14/02/2014)

The beautiful story is only separated from perfection by a strange linguistic entanglement. The characters speak English with a German accent (except for the mayor's fiery speech, which is all in German), German words "ja", "nein", "und", "Saumensch" and so on are sometimes slipped into their English sentences, there are German signs on all the houses, and yet the books are written in English and so are the people... That's just something you don't have to deal with when you read the book, but you do in the film. But otherwise I have nothing to complain about in The Book Thief. Amazing performances by Sophie Nélisse, Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson, a number of unforgettable scenes backed by Williams' out-of-this-world music (the snow battle leads the way), perfect narration... I'm so glad I watched The Book Thief on the big screen. (21/01/2014)

Another monstrous contribution to the scary "Holocaust for the Whole Family" sub-genre, which includes, for example, the much-adored The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Compared to that, The Book Thief isn't as aggressively retarded and sci-fi-istic, but even here the view of that whole Nazi Germany problem is summed up as Hitler and a few of his cronies deciding to wage war and cleanse the Reich, and the rest of the Germans just trying to survive before it rolls over. That demonization of the individual is actually quite an appealing progression from classic wartime films where German equated to an obligatory barrel in the back of the head; on the other hand, here the element of danger is constantly represented by the sound of car engines, whose arrival on the street where 80% of the film takes place rarely means anything pleasant. However, the problem with The Book Thief is its narrow focus on school screenings, where they check off the elements of the fact that the Nazi thing probably wasn't entirely kosher in the individual scenes, but without a hint of healthy naturalism, and for the love over a monstrous 130 minutes. The moldy cherry on the stale cake (where they made up for the missing flour with detergent), is the character of the narrator – Death, voiced by Geoffrey Rush, i.e. one of the protagonists of the story, but these characters otherwise have nothing to do with each other, so I was all mixed up when it actually comes out that Liesel's adoptive father is actually Death and they're all long stiff or something. Anyway, whenever the movie pulls off a potentially interesting and atypical scene, unfortunately someone decided that the narrator had to inform the audience that the scene was interesting and atypical. (01/05/2014)