Whatever virtues turned “The Book Thief” into an acclaimed and honored international best-seller are strangely absent from the film adaptation. A sad orphan’s story bereft of emotion, a paean to books that does precious little to pass that on to the viewer, a Holocaust tale where the Holocaust has been sanitized and washed out of the story — it’s a flat exercise in recreating a place and time but not really “getting” the point of it all.
Brian Percival, a veteran of the TV soap opera “Downton Abbey,” tips his hand early. Little Liesel (Sophie Nelisse) is on her way to a new family with her younger brother. The brother dies, en route — and she, and we feel … nothing.
Since the tale is narrated, ironically by “Death” (Roger Allam), we wonder if that’s not perhaps the point.
“The Book Thief” is about Liesel’s life living in an unnamed small German city from 1938-45. She arrives, 11 years old and illiterate. Her kindly stepdad, Hans (Geoffrey Rush, at his twinkliest), an accordion-playing house painter and handyman, gently tricks “Your Majesty,” as he calls her, into learning to read. Her grumpy new stepmother Rosa (Emily Watson) tolerates this, and not much else.
But neighbor boy Rudy (Nico Liersch) is smitten. And no amount of bullying, no number of brush-offs can keep him from Liesel’s side. They witness Germany’s slide into World War II together, from Kristallnacht to utter defeat, giving us a child’s-eye view of what they see.
Liesel’s past comes out and the Nazis show their true colors as Jews flee or are rounded up. A few chilling moments come from Liesel’s Hitler Youth uniform and their child anthems, about rejecting “non-Germanic” citizens and the book burning. The Nazis liked to burn books. Liesel, instinctively, sees this for the crime it is.
Percival, working from a Michael Petroni script of the Markus Zusak novel, finds fun in Liesel rescuing a book from a bonfire (smoke, wisping through her coat, alarming Hans). But Percival is at a loss about what to do with the Holocaust and a major character, Max (Ben Schnetzer), a Jew whom we see flee the country, yet somehow come back and require sheltering by Liesel’s new family.
It’s too watered down for adults — lacking the satiric bite you might expect from a tale narrated by Death — and too grim for kids.
And everybody speaks a sort of old-fashioned Hollywood hybrid of German and English. “Gott im Himmel!”
Still, “The Book Thief” falls somewhere on the “Life is Sweet” / “Boy in the Striped Pajamas” scale of WWII tales, never exactly trivializing the war, the suffering and the Holocaust. Rush and Watson make strong impressions, but no one else does.
Whatever kudos it deserves for historical accuracy are lost in a tedious parade of cliches, a flat film experience served up in an overly generous, two-hour-plus helping.
“The Book Thief” (2 stars)
A German girl is sent to live with foster parents as World War II breaks out. The best-selling novel gets a flat movie treatment. With Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson
Rated: PG-13 for violence, themes.
Showing: Area theaters.
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