Interview: “The Book Thief”

Posted on November 15, 2013 at 8:00 am

Following an extraordinary evening presenting the film at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, with survivors in the audience, some of the people behind “The Book Thief” sat down for an interview.  Director Brian Percival, who introduced the film, joined stars Sophie Nélisse, who plays Liesel, the title character, Geoffrey Rush, who plays Hans, her foster father, and the young Australian author of the book that inspired the film, Markus Zusak.

I began by asking Zusak about the book’s title.  Is Liesel really a thief? “I remember reviews at some point said, ‘She hardly even steals any books!’  I added up one all of the books listed in the novel and there were about seventeen, mostly titles I made up, and I counted how many she actually stole.  I decided she had stolen enough and it was a good title.  It felt right.  The Book Borrower?  It wouldn’t work as well.  It’s also different in the book when you make all those coincidences come together.  But the book had a reason for the mayor’s wife to keep the window of her library open.  She wanted it cold so she could go into that room to suffer and think about her son who died.  In the Portuguese version, it’s called The Little Girl Who Stole the Books, and that sounds so poetic in that language.”thebookthief2

I asked Sophie Nélisse if it was hard to play a character who does not talk very much, especially in the beginning of the film.  “My mom says that my face can say everything, so if I’m bored you can see it clearly on my forehead. I think it came naturally but it was wonderful working with Brian , who always made me feel very special.  If I did a scene badly, sometimes he would go, ‘Oh, can you maybe try this?  Go a bit this way?’  He would give me maybe five corrections but would always end by saying, ‘But it was great’ or ‘It was perfect.’  He wouldn’t say, ‘Do this,’ or ‘I want Liesel to be like that.’  He would let me do it my own way and then he would guide me.”  She has to look much older at the end of the movie — she said that makeup emphasized her cheekbones, and Percival added that they put a ramp and had her in heels to make her taller next to the other actors.  “The Alan Ladd phenomenon,” joked Rush, referring to the notoriously short actor who had to stand on a box for his kissing scenes.

Rush said that for his character, playing the accordion was like a monologue on stage.  “You read a script and look at all those elements — what does this character do, what do the other characters do to him and say about him, build up a portrait of what the personality will be.  It was such a vibrant and wonderful dimension of the character.  If it had been a violin it would have been a completely different experience.  I loved the sound of the wheezing bellows.  They were like lungs.  I finally learned the fingering but my tutor would always say, ‘It’s the breathing and the flow.’  That’s a great image for the internal rhythm of Hans.  There were seven pieces we did.  One didn’t make it into the film, but it was a great way to segue the encroaching hostilities — I was playing somewhat facetiously outside the room when the children were singing the anti-Semitic song that had been taught to them.  But the moments of ‘The Blue Danube’ in the bunker.  You can see he’s brought it in to protect one of the dearest things in his life and it’s his way of keeping calm, being familiar, and it’s a classic German/Austrian piece.  The piece he plays later is very well known to a German audience, an old freedom song, an anti-Nazi song.  You’d like to think that’s his way of rehabilitation.  He will get over the shell-shock and having been injured.  There will be some regrowth in the character.  I could express something about the character that was completely abstract.  I would not say this film had magical realism, but as in the novel there were happy accidents that made it filmic.  You can’t hear music in the book.”

Percival spoke about talking to the survivors following the screening.  He acknowledged the difficulty of handling such sensitive material respectfully and was encouraged by the “incredibly positive” reaction of the people who had lived through the Holocaust, and touched that they wanted to share their stories with him, stories that included some of the kindness of German citizens like that shown by Hans in the film as well as the atrocities inflicted by others.  “People actually sold out their friends and their neighbors in some cases because they coveted their property.  I can’t think of much lower than that.  I can understand if you fear for your own life or were brainwashed into believing something wrong.  But to do it for material gain — that is heartbreaking.  One of the guys I spoke to had been protected by farmers who hid him for two or three years right under the nose of the Nazi occupation of France, putting their own lives in peril, taking terrible risks, a noble act.”  Zusek said, as he had at the movie, it was that which inspired him to write the book, the contrast between the best and worst of human behavior that the Holocaust brought out in people.

 

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Actors Behind the Scenes Books Directors

The Book Thief

Posted on November 14, 2013 at 6:00 pm

The title character in “The Book Thief” is Liesel (Sophie Nélisse), a little girl in pre-WWII Germany.  We first see her on a train with her mother and dying younger brother.  The children were both going to be delivered to foster parents but Liesel and her mother stop along the way to bury her brother.  As the gravedigger leans over, a book falls out of his pocket.  Liesel picks it up.book-thief

Her new parents are the frosty Rosa (Emily Watson) and the gentle Hans (Geoffrey Rush).  At first, Liesel is so traumatized she cannot speak.  But Hans hears her softly singing Brahms’ lullabye to herself at night and coaxes her into talking to him by playing the song on his accordion.  When he finds that she cannot read, he uses her book to teach her.  She tells him it is hers, but “it didn’t used to be.”  That was not hard to guess; it is a book about digging graves.

Liesel is befriended by a friendly classmate named Rudy (Nico Liersch), an athletic kid who wants to race like Olympic champion Jesse Owens.  Around them, the rise of the Nazi party is evident in omnipresent banners and badges.  A school choir sweetly sings an anti-Semitic song.  Hans’ skills as a house and sign painter prove useful when someone has to remove the insults painted on his Jewish neighbor’s store.  Liesel becomes a book thief again when Hitler’s birthday is celebrated with a huge book burning.  It is less a theft than a rescue, the book smouldering under her coat as she hides it from Hans.  The book is The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells.

The impact of the Nazi regime literally hits home when Max (Ben Schnetzer) arrives.  Max’s father sacrificed himself to save Hans’ life in the first World War.  It is his accordion that Hans cherishes so dearly.  Hans and Rosa talk about whether they are prepared to take the risk of hiding Max, but they know they have no choice.  Max becomes very ill and as Liesel helps to nurse him back to health, they become very devoted to one another.  She “borrows” books (without asking) from the home of the wealthiest man in town to read to him.

The young Australian author Markus Zusak was inspired to write The Book Thief by a story he heard from his mother, who emigrated from Germany following World War II.  A teenage boy in her village ran to give bread to a starving man who was being herded with other Jews by Nazis delivering them to a concentration camp.  Both the man and the boy who tried to help him were whipped by the Nazis.  This story of the very best and worst of humanity gave him the idea of a story set in Germany during the Holocaust.

Addressing the Holocaust through fiction is a daunting challenge and this film does not always master it.  An uncertain sense of its audience makes it feel off at times, too simplistic for adults and too disturbing for young audiences.  An episodic structure seems meandering and unfocused.  Most problematically, the choice of Death as a narrator works better on paper than on film.  But Rush’s performance and some touching moments make this what is perhaps the best we can hope for in grappling with the incomprehensible — a part of a conversation, even a conversation about what does not work, that keeps us striving to honor the memory of those who suffered and to strengthen our resolve once again to conquor the fear and ignorance that caused it.

Parents should know that this film is set during the Nazi atrocities of WWII Germany.  There are many sad deaths and references to the Holocaust, racist and anti-Semitic comments, fighting, and some war-time violence.

Family discussion:  Is Liesel a thief?  Why did she read to Max when he was ill?

If you like this, try: the book, “The Story of Anne Frank,” and “The Devil’s Arithmetic”

 

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Based on a book Drama

“Book Thief’s” Director Explains an Important Scene

Posted on November 10, 2013 at 8:00 am

The NY Times’ terrific Anatomy of a Scene series has director Brian Percival explain a key scene in “The Book Thief,” including the off-camera operation of puffs of smoke inside the jacket of the main character after she rescues a book from a burning pile.

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Behind the Scenes
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