The Book Thief: A Review

Annyeonghaseyo~!

I've finally gotten around to writing another blog post. This one shall be a review of the movie, The Book Thief. It will mostly be movie biased, seeing as I have not read the book by Markus Zusak yet. Although, after seeing the movie, I believe that reading the book will be not far behind.

I shall start off by presenting the storyline. The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany 1939. Liesel Meminger is a ten year old girl whose mother had to give her up for adoption, alongside her little brother. Due to sickness, she loses her brother on the way to the foster home and while digging a grave for him, finds a book entitled The Grave Digger's Handbook. So begins her journey for knowledge.

After her arrival at her foster home, she quickly bonds with her new Papa, and continues her search for more books and learning new things. Later on, she befriends a young Jew who takes refuge in her house to escape the Holocaust.

This movie is a touching story of a young girl who has a thirst for knowledge, and a love for her family and friends. Seeing as it's set in Nazi Germany, there is tragedy and death all around. Yet in the midst of all the disaster, this girl finds hope in books.

First, I'd like to say, I love the acting. Sophie Nélisse does an amazing job as Liesel, from my perspective. The actors made the characters believable to where I was even more entranced by the movie. One thing that I've noticed a lot of people don't like, is that they're speaking English, with a German accent - in Germany. Honestly, I like this aspect, as it would make it harder for some viewers to watch if it had subtitles (though, I still had to put subtitles on as sometimes the German accent was a bit thick and hard to understand). I love the storyline, as it's a very touching tale. Toward the end, I was trying to hold back tears.

The movie also shows a different side to the Holocaust: the Nazi's side. It shows that Nazi's weren't all born into hatred, and that they weren't made from hatred. Liesel shows that by cheerfully singing the Nazi anthem in one scene. Yet, she remembers her mother, which makes her hesitate.

Now, I'm obviously not a very good reviewer, because I find it hard to dislike things  in a movie that I really like. I'll just end up listing all the good parts about it. But honestly, I think the movie was fairly well carried out. The only thing I had any problem with was understanding the accent at times. A couple of German words were thrown in for good measure, but it didn't take away from the story.

Do you guys have any other opinions? Different points that I didn't list? Let me know in the comments!

~이하눌