The Book Thief (2013)

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von thoma
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The Book Thief (2013)

#1

Post by von thoma » 20 Nov 2016, 19:45

I would like your opinions about this movie ?
Thanks for your answers.
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hucks216
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Re: The Book Thief (2013)

#2

Post by hucks216 » 20 Nov 2016, 20:06

It is a decent enough film. If you are struggling to find anything else to pass the time then give it a go. 3/5


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Re: The Book Thief (2013)

#3

Post by Castro46 » 23 Nov 2016, 23:26

It is an interesting movie, a bit childish sometimes, but reflects decently how was the beginning of the end of the war for the inhabitants of Germany.
As always happens with this kind of movies, the book is better than the film.

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von thoma
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Re: The Book Thief (2013)

#4

Post by von thoma » 15 Oct 2017, 03:33

Could you confirm to me, if are really TeNo policemen involved during the house register ?
Thank you.
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mark severin
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Re: The Book Thief (2013)

#5

Post by mark severin » 21 Dec 2017, 10:06

This is the kind of movie you could show your kids as a way to first begin a discussion of World War II and the Holocaust.
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Re: The Book Thief (2013)

#6

Post by Nautilus » 10 Mar 2021, 15:01

The book is better than the film for a serious reason.

As the story unfolds in the book, it sounds a bit off - in the book written in the early 2000s, people do not speak or act as they were expected (as they had done in stories written during the 1930s-1940s or shortly after).

The first impression may be Markus Zusak did only superficial research before conceiving the story. But it can't be true, Mr. Zusak being a child of people who immigrated from the defunct Reich itself.

So why did a thoroughly informed author conceive the story as he did?

Most likely the book is a deconstruction. It takes the usual tropes the Western world associates with WWII and the Reich, dissects them and sews them back together.

For complex political reasons, the commonly understood description of the Reich from the 1960s to the 2000s revolved around the ideas of re-armament, conquest, technological progress, battlefield bravery, tyranny, violence, smuggling, black market... usual tropes of adventure novels. There had been accepted facts: the life of the poor classes improved somehow during the 1930s, the first years of the war were successful, whatever evils people suffered were due to bombings, rationing or persecution from "Gestapo", "SS" or others like this. There was a group of people called "Nazis", recognizable by uniforms and IDs, who had the power and dictated, while the population worked and the "Wehrmacht" and "Waffen-SS" fought.

This is practically never seen in the book, everything is upside-down:

The life and career of poor workman Hans Hubermann go worse and worse from year to year.
The civilian population wonders how to make petty nuisances, first to Jews and later, when Jews are no more, to their neighbours and schoolmates.
The only young man who fits the "heroic" image of the Wehrmacht Soldier is Hans Jr., who hates his own father for "not being enough of a National Socialist" and "acting cowardly". Hans Jr. does no longer appear after 1942, most likely died a horrible death on the Eastern Front. Michael and Robert Holtzapfel, who share his fate, had been less enthusiastic soldiers to begin with.
Rudy Steiner is the polar opposite of Hans Jr.: he has all physical and academic abilities which should have opened his career path, as other figures who came of age during the early days of the Reich did. Both he and his father openly refuse to act on this possibility to improve their lot in life. Even when openly asked by officials, who wonder why a kid so gifted remains in poverty.
The Hitlerjugend teenagers appear almost monstrous - not just for their bullying or brawling, which are worse enough, but for their pettiness, theft and other (intentionally) un-manly deeds. (In more traditional parts of the Western world, pettiness is a "feminine" character flaw. Liesel is intentionally portrayed as acting more "manly" than boys.)
The usual trope, common in European literature, of the self-taught kid who reads and schools himself / herself to raise from poverty is overturned: Liesel is practically illiterate before being taken in by the Hubermanns and in the beginning barely interested to inform herself or cultivate her mind. (This is a subtle jab to the Führer's own bragging of knowing a lot because he had taught himself from a young age.)
Liesel's described appearance (thin, hungry, poorly groomed) and Max Vandenburg's bodily decay in hiding and forced labor camp are two jabs at the National Socialist emphasis on physical perfection. Boxing was highly popular before 1945, almost as soccer is today, and the popular image of boxers was that of heroic figures, strongest among men. Not incidentally is Max portrayed as a boxer - to show how the regime gnawed even the strongest of men.

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