The Book Thief
Dir: Brian Percival
2013
***
Markus Zusak's novel is a dark but wonderful tale of a little girl in Nazi Germany and is narrated by Death himself. As you'd expect, and rightly so given the subject matter, The Book Thief isn't an easy going story. It is this balance of dark and light, good and evil, beauty and ugliness that is at the heart of the books success and why it has struck a chord with its readers. Brian Percival's adaptation is a muddled one. Death's narration doesn't quite fit with what is essentially a colour by numbers drama. The balance of joy (sprawling classical music as the children run to school) and darkness (death) is horribly off kilter, making for quite a disjointed and unpredictable film. The performances are brilliant, Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson and the young Sophie Nelisse and Nico Liersch are fantastic and really do bring the characters to life. I can't help but think though that the tone of the film is all wrong, I was disappointed as a fan of the book and I know those who were equally disappointed who hadn't read the book but were lead to believe it was something it wasn't by the first half of the film. Unpredictability is generally a good thing but being mislead isn't and that is what the film does essentially. The powerful conclusion falls a little flat in the film when it should have been a pretty momentous piece of cinema. It's a good film still but a poor adaptation, the book deserved much better and I can think of several directors who should have been at the helm instead, certainly one with a little more experience.