Movies and Movie Reviews: Adaptation

The Book Thief (2013)

Movie Details

Title: The Book Thief

Running Time: 125 Minutes

Status: Released

Country: United States

Genre: Adaptation, Drama, Period

Directed by Brian Percival; written by Michael Petroni, based on the novel by Markus Zusak; director of photography, Florian Ballhaus; edited by John Wilson; music by John Williams; production design by Simon Elliott; costumes by Anna B. Sheppard; produced by Karen Rosenfelt and Ken Blancato; released by 20th Century Fox.

WITH: Geoffrey Rush (Hans Hubermann), Emily Watson (Rosa Hubermann), Sophie Nélisse (Liesel), Ben Schnetzer (Max), Roger Allam (Death), Barbara Auer (Ilsa Hermann) and Nico Liersch (Rudy).

Speaking in the honeyed, insinuating tone of the Wolf cajoling Little Red Riding Hood to do his bidding, the narrator of “The Book Thief” is none other than Death himself (Roger Allam), although he coyly refuses to disclose his identity. This irritating know-it-all regularly interrupts the story of Liesel (Sophie Nélisse), a bright-eyed girl living with foster parents in a fictional German town during World War II, to comment obliquely on human nature and mortality.

More About This Movie

Except for the Nazi flags hanging from every building, the town, under a glistening blanket of snow, could be the cozy setting for a holiday greeting card. The pieces of the story, which begins in 1938, are so neatly arranged that the movie has the narrative flow and comforting familiarity of a beloved fairy tale.

A contradiction between a veneer of innocence and the realities of Nazism and the Holocaust is a signature characteristic of “The Book Thief,” Markus Zusak’s immensely popular young-adult novel, from which the movie, directed by Brian Percival (“Downton Abbey”), was adapted, with a screenplay by Michael Petroni (“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”).

The years-spanning film, which observes traumatic historical events through Liesel’s eyes, looks and tastes like a giant sugar cake whose saccharinity largely camouflages the horrors of the war. Like a caring dentist reassuring a frightened child, it purveys a message: “Don’t be afraid. I’ll try not hurt you, although you might feel a little pinch.”

There’s one scene of Jews wearing yellow stars and being herded grimly out of the town. There’s another of Nazi officers searching houses for Jews concealed in cellars. And late in the movie, the town is leveled by bombs. Although the damage is catastrophic, the bodies laid out on the street seem untouched, as if the victims were fast asleep and ready for instant transport to heaven.

Liesel’s foster father, Hans Hubermann (Geoffrey Rush), is an impoverished, kindhearted house painter and “good German,” suffering from deprivation because he never joined the Nazi Party. He plays the accordion, and even in the darkest moments, its lilt conveys a spirit of bonhomie. His wife, Rosa (Emily Watson), is a fearful scold when Liesel meets her for the first time. But a soft heart beats under the surface.

The actors play their characters like storybook figures imagined by a smart, curious child. From character to character, their accents vary from heavily Germanic to British; the language spoken is English seasoned with German exclamations.

Liesel is a little princess whose foster father teaches her to read after her schoolmates taunt her for illiteracy. After witnessing a book-burning rally, she borrows, then steals, volumes from the home of the local burgermeister, whose wife (Barbara Auer) lets her visit her late son’s personal library. Memorizing what she reads, she distracts fearful Germans huddled in a bomb shelter with her recitations.

Liesel’s best friend and next-door neighbor, Rudy (Nico Liersch), is a towheaded angel who idolizes Jesse Owens, the track star of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and is taunted for painting his face black in imitation. When he is selected by the Nazis for elite military training, he rebels and runs off with Liesel to a secluded location, where they both shout, “I hate Hitler!”

The Hubermanns risk their lives when they shelter Max (Ben Schnetzer), the impossibly noble son of a Jewish army buddy who saved Hans’s life during World War I. There are hints of a possible romantic competition between Rudy and the older Max for Liesel, whose portrayal by Ms. Nélisse is appealing but bland.

I can’t imagine that the creators of “The Book Thief” were aware of their movie’s underlying message that it really wasn’t that bad. John Williams’s score — a quieter, more somber echo of his music for “Schindler’s List” — lends the film an unearned patina of solemnity, for “The Book Thief” is a shameless piece of Oscar-seeking Holocaust kitsch.

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Written and directed by Gavin Hood, based on the book by Orson Scott Card; director of photography, Donald M. McAlpine; edited by Zach Staenberg and Lee Smith; music by Steve Jablonsky; production design by Sean Haworth and Ben Procter; costumes by Christine Bieselin Clark; visual effects supervisor, Matthew E. Butler; produced by Gigi Pritzker, Linda McDonough, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Robert Chartoff, Lynn Hendee, Mr. Card and Ed Ulbrich; released by Summit Entertainment. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes.

WITH: Harrison Ford (Colonel Graff), Asa Butterfield (Ender Wiggin), Hailee Steinfeld (Petra Arkanian), Viola Davis (Major Gwen Anderson), Abigail Breslin (Valentine Wiggin), Nonso Anozie (Sergeant Dap) and Ben Kingsley (Mazer Rackham).At one point in “Ender’s Game,” the boy brainiac Ender Wiggin stands on a podium waving his arms. A vast, immersive image of outer space is spread out before him, and if you didn’t know better, you might think he was playing Wii on an Imax screen. It’s an amusingly self-reflexive moment in a humorless movie about children who play war games as part of their very grown-up military training. As he furiously moves spaceships and troops across computer screens, he looks, by turns, like a superexcited kid, an orchestra conductor, Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and even a Christ figure. Childhood can be tough in movies, but rarely do screen children suffer for our sins as they do here.

Based on the 1985 science-fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, the movie envisions a future world ruled by a monolithic militaristic government that trains children to fight large insectlike extraterrestrials called Formics or buggers. When the story opens, Ender (Asa Butterfield) thinks he’s just another runt with a monitor jammed in his neck that allows the authorities, personified by Colonel Graff who, because he’s played by Harrison Ford, should have been called Gruff, and a psychologist, Major Anderson (Viola Davis), to observe each potential warrior’s words, moods and tears. Graff believes that Ender may be the child to lead them all, a sermon he preaches as Ender is tested first on Earth and then in the outer space battle school where the movie gets its game on.

It’s no surprise that Mr. Card’s novel, which he followed with several sequels, has sold a zillion copies. The charismatic leader, the divine child, the possible Christ figure or potential Hitler stand-in (according to one notorious, widely circulated reading): Ender Wiggin is an expediently malleable figure. In the novel, he is also, shades of the Spartans, 6 when he ships off to battle school, which puts a distinctly ugly spin on a scene in the book in which he methodically brutalizes a bully, kicking the other boy repeatedly, including in the face. Ender has logically decided that by crushing the other boy, he will prevent future attacks, a prophylactic philosophy that mirrors the authorities’ attitude toward the buggers. He’s 12 in the movie, which doesn’t make that beating any better.

It’s taken decades for “Ender’s Game” to reach the screen, and it’s hard not to think that it had to wait for the right anxious moment. In the 1950s, adolescent alienation meant Sal Mineo’s Christ figure dying in the embrace of his surrogate parents in “Rebel Without a Cause.” Many years and sad stories later, the kids are still not all right, and while much remains the same, much has changed, including the familiar reality of the child who kills. Like the kids in the “Harry Potter” franchise and in “The Hunger Games,” Ender and his schoolmates do have childish moments. Yet what’s striking about the children in these pop culture behemoths is that, unlike in “Rebel,” they aren’t allowed to pretend to be adults, because the world compels them to assume those roles.

The adults in “Ender’s Game” come off as exceedingly creepy, despite Mr. Ford’s strained avuncularity and Ms. Davis’s flooding eyes. Ender is singled out because he seems to be a natural leader, which in the logic of both the book and the movie means someone who imposes his will on enemy and friend alike. He’s rational and brutal, which is a harder sell on the screen, where every punch carries an unsettling intensity that the director, Gavin Hood, has trouble managing. Mr. Butterfield is one of those young performers whose seriousness feels as if it sprang from deep within. And while he’s an appealing presence, little Ender can’t help feeling like a pint-size psycho.

Mr. Hood, whose script winnows the novel into two hours of mostly action and a fair amount of talk, does better once the story shifts to space. (Ender’s home, where crammed bookshelves line one wall and his mother bustles alone in the kitchen like a 1950s housewife, has a pointless antediluvian quality.) Among the dividends are a barking sergeant, Dap (Nonso Anozie), and a giant geodesic-dome-like room in which trainees practice in zero gravity. It’s pleasant to watch these tiny untethered bodies float like cosmic motes and to follow Ender into an appealingly detailed animated computer game, in which he tumbles down a rabbit hole and discovers a mystery that will presumably only be fully solved in the sequels. His tribulations are likely not over.

“Ender’s Game” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Genocidal violence and extreme fighting among children.

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