The Book Thief

Sophie Nelisse Director: Brian Percival Brian Percival

Overview

A young girl (Sophie Nelisse) living with foster parents (Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson) in Nazi Germany begins collecting forbidden books and sharing them with the Jewish refugee hiding in her home in this war drama adapted from Markus Zusak's book by screenwriter Michael Petroni (The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys) and director Brian Percival (Downton Abbey).

Product Details

Release Date:	03/11/2014
UPC:	0024543886563
Original Release:	2013
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	20TH CENTURY FOX
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby AC-3 Surround Sound]
Time:	2:11:00
Sales rank:	3,381

Special Features

Closed Caption; Deleted scenes

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Sophie Nelisse	Liesel
Geoffrey Rush	Hans
Emily Watson	Rosa
Ben Schnetzer	Max
Nico Liersch	Rudy
Roger Allam	Narrator,Death
Heike Makatsch	Liesel's Mother
Julian Lehmann	Liesel's Brother
Gotthard Lange	Grave Digger
Rainer Reiners	Priest
Kirsten Block	Frau Heinrich
Ludger Bokelmann	Football Urchin #1
Paul Schalper	Football Urchin #2
Nozomi Linus Kaisar	Fat Faced Goalie
Oliver Stokowski	Alex Steiner
Robert Beyer	Jewish Accountant
Hildegard Schroedter	Frau Becker
Levin Liam	Franz Deutscher
Sandra Nedeleff	Srah
Rafael Gareisen	Walter Nazi Soldier
Carl Heinz Choynski	Jüergen the Groundsman
Carina Wiese	Barbara Steiner
Rainer Bock	Buergmeister Hermann
Barbara Auer	Ilsa Hermann
Sebastian Hülk	Gestapo Agent
Matthias Matschke	Wolfgang
Beata Lehmann	Woman with Champagne
Laina Schwarz	Neighbor
Marie Burchard	Neighbor
Georg Tryphon	Neighbor
Joachim Paul Assböck	Officer
Martin Ontrop	Herr Lehmann
Jan Andres	Fellow Conscript
Stephanie Stremler	Post Woman

Technical Credits

Michael Petroni

Brian Percival	Director
Florian Ballhaus	Cinematographer
Ken Blancato	Producer
Phil Booth	Asst. Director
Kate Dowd	Casting
Simon Elliott	Production Designer
Katja Fischer	Set Decoration/Design
Christoph Fisser	Co-producer
Michael Fissneider	Set Decoration/Design
Glenn Freemantle	Sound/Sound Designer
Nefzer Babelsberg GmbH	Special Effects
Fae Hammond	Makeup
Jens Löckmann	Art Director
Jens Schmiedel	Special Effects Supervisor
John Wilson	Editor
Marika Knappe	Makeup
Henning Molfenter	Co-producer
Redmond Morris	Executive Producer
Anja Müller	Art Director
Uli Nefzer	Special Effects Supervisor
Michael Petroni	Screenwriter
Karen Rosenfelt	Producer
Anna Sheppard	Costumes/Costume Designer
John Williams [composer]	Score Composer
Charlie Woebcken	Co-producer

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- The Book Thief
1. Scene 1
2. Scene 2
3. Scene 3
4. Scene 4
5. Scene 5
6. Scene 6
7. Scene 7
8. Scene 8
9. Scene 9
10. Scene 10
11. Scene 11
12. Scene 12
13. Scene 13
14. Scene 14
15. Scene 15
16. Scene 16
17. Scene 17
18. Scene 18
19. Scene 19
20. Scene 20
21. Scene 21
22. Scene 22
23. Scene 23
24. Scene 24
25. Scene 25
26. Scene 26
27. Scene 27
28. Scene 28
29. Scene 29
30. Scene 30
31. Scene 31
32. Scene 32
33. Scene 33
34. Scene 34
35. Scene 35
36. Scene 36

Menu

Disc #1 -- The Book Thief
   Play
   Set Up
      Audio
         English Dolby Digital 5.1
         English Descriptive Audio 5.1
         Español Surround Dolby Digital 2.0
         Français Surround Dolby Digital 2.0
      Subtitles
         English for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
         Español
         Subtitles: Off
   Scenes
   Extras
      Deleted Scenes
         Play All
         Read a Good Book
         Papers?
         "I Can't Leave You Now"
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Editorial Reviews

Director Brian Percival's adaptation of the international best-seller The Book Thief is the kind of earnest, handsomely produced, well-meaning, tearjerking historical drama that brings to mind the lament voiced by the character of Clarence in Quentin Tarantino's script for True Romance -- that there are too many unwatchable movies made from unreadable books. While that sentence is assuredly too harsh for this picture, the sentiment behind it rings true. The film stars Sophie Nelisse as Liesel, who, as the story opens, is an 11-year-old girl living in Germany just before the start of World War II. Her mother is giving both Liesel and her younger brother up for adoption, but her sibling dies en route. As they perform a makeshift funeral, a small book drops from the pocket of one of the men and the young girl quickly pockets it -- letting us know that she is the title character. She arrives in a small German town and meets her new stepparents, the severe Rosa (Emily Watson) and the playful Hans (Geoffrey Rush), who have chosen to care for unfamiliar children because of the monthly allowance it brings into their poor household. Liesel soon begins getting reading lessons from Hans and befriends a neighborhood boy named Rudy. Although her new family is German, they do not belong to the Nazi party, which makes them objects of suspicion in the town. That paranoia grows even sharper when a teenage Jew named Max (Ben Schnetzer), who has a connection to Hans, shows up at their home and needs to be hidden from authorities. Liesel is forced to keep their secret, and Max turns out to be an excellent friend for the young girl. The Holocaust is, understandably, a subject that primes an audience to cry, and when The Book Thief reveals in its opening minute that its disembodied narrator is the voice of Death itself, either your defenses go up immediately and you harden to stone or you settle in with a truck full of tissues. The movie so obviously wants to put you through the wringer that it's impossible to let yourself enjoy Liesel's fleeting moments of happiness, since you know they only exist so they can be crushed. Having Death provide the narration for Liesel's life is an obvious literary conceit, and if it were the only one, it might not grate as much as it does here. Sadly, books, reading, and storytelling are all central themes of the movie -- even if you didn't know going in that it was a literary adaptation, it would be obvious almost immediately. Even with Florian Ballhaus' exquisite cinematography, which recalls the great Gordon Willis in its expressive use of darkness, The Book Thief is frustratingly uncinematic -- you can appreciate the artful visuals, but it ends up feeling like a checklist of scenes from a book, not a natural narrative that flows from one scene to the next. The actors are uniformly strong, with Geoffrey Rush walking away with the movie as the gentle-hearted Hans. The character is no less of a contrivance than anything else in this overly designed story, but Rush gives him an undeniable humanity that makes the audience empathize with the toll that being a good man in a bad world takes on kind souls. When the film finally reaches an ending that strains to maximize both tears of sadness and heartwarming uplift, some viewers will be a total emotional mess. Yet many others will feel like they just sat through a well-intentioned but ultimately empty book report.

All Movie Guide - Perry Seibert