BEFORE: Emily Watson carries over from "Equilibrium" and I realize that I accidentally programmed almost a whole week of "World War" movies - I had three films in a row set during World War I, we saw Marie Curie X-raying soldiers on the front lines, then men serving in an integrated unit in "Amsterdam", then a film about the Armenian genocide that took place right near the start of WWI. "Equilibrium" was about the time after World War III, which I realize is a different thing, it's sci-fi and not historical, but still, a World War. Tonight it's back to reality with a story set during World War II, which was a real war that happened, and we have to not let history forget itself, or else history could repeat itself.
THE PLOT: While subjected to the horrors of World War II Germany, young Liesel finds solace by stealing books and sharing them with others. In the basement of her home, a Jewish refugee is being protected by her adoptive parents.
AFTER: I know this story is based on a very famous novel from 2005, so I can just assume that the film uses the same tried-and-true technique of winning over the audience with a sympathetic character. Liesel is put up for adoption, or her mother's not able to take care of her any more, and sends her and her brother to live with foster parents. (Her brother dies on the train there, coincidentally the film is narrated by Death itself, so he's there for the death of her brother, and do you want to bet he turns up again before the film is over?). So Liesel's down on her luck, has to move to a new city, get new parents AND her brother just kicked it - all right, all right, I'll feel sorry for her, Jeez!
Liesel has to get used to the Hubermanns, her "new Mama" and "new Papa" - New Papa seems like fun, he plays the accordion, reads her bedtime stories and then redecorates the whole basement with blackboards so she can amass a "dictionary" of new words on the walls. New Mama is less fun, she nags Liesel in the mornings about getting ready for school, and how to eat her morning soup. Soup? I guess breakfast cereal hadn't been invented yet, or maybe it just didn't reach Germany yet. But wouldn't you think Germans would have sausages for breakfast? Oh, right, it was the 1930's and times were tough. OK, soup for breakfast. Now, most people would pity Liesel for having a new mother that's so tough on her, but if I'm being honest, it kind of made me miss my German grandmother - I got constantly nagged by her to do chores, like mowing the lawn. Or she was on me about cutting my hair, she hated my ponytail. Look, this is just how German women express love for their children, through nagging, it's a cultural thing.
Though the movie never says it, the book apparently reveals that Liesel's father was a Communist who abandoned the family, but I'm not sure how this fact ties into young Liesel never learning how to read. She's like 12 years old and this never came up? Did she not go to school, or did she somehow fail to learn anything there? It's not clear. in her new town, the other kids call her "dumbkopf" and the bullies pick on both her and her neighbor, Rudy, a small blonde kid who dreams of being the next Jesse Owens someday. (OK, you tell him...). This is another thing common to films, to show kids just being kids in the middle of adversity, so this part reminded me of "Belfast".
Completing the "family" is the Jewish man hiding in the Hubermann's basement - what German movie family in the 1930's would be complete without one? Max is the son of a World War I soldier who fought alongside Hans Hubermann, and he's also sick and has no place else to go when the Germans start rounding up all the Jewish people and putting them on trains - you know, sending them somewhere safe, what with the War coming up and all. The family has to conceal him when the Nazis start doing "basement checks", supposedly they're checking out basements to see if they can be used as air raid shelters, but we all know what they're REALLY doing, right?
Liesel is called "the book thief", because she does steal books at different moments in the film - the first is the manual that drops out of the gravedigger's pocket at her brother's funeral, only I have to call a NITPICK POINT here, we learn a bit later that she can't read, so, umm, why did she pick up that book then? Doesn't seem to make sense... Then when the Germans are burning books at rallies, she's made to throw a book on the fire, but then later she pulls one from the aftermath - and puts it under her coat while it's still burning. I guess it's her version of "leave a penny, take a penny". But come on, wait for the flames to go out, you dumbkopf! Later on, she delivers laundry to the house of the mayor, and she's befriended by his wife, I guess because they had a son who died? Anyway, the mayor's wife says she can come by any time and read the mayor's books, but this arrangement only lasts until the mayor finds out about it - but after he puts an end to her visits, she sneaks back in and steals his books.
Hans tries to step in when the Nazis try to take away another Jewish neighbor, and this puts him on the radar of the Gestapo. He feels he needs to leave town to keep his family safe, but then learns that, what a coincidence, he's been conscripted to military service and has to leave for training camp, anyway. OK, problem solved, right? But Hans gets injured in the war when a truck flips over, and he eventually returns home. But if you think good fortune is coming to the characters here, you're way off base. Death takes over as the narrator again just before a bombing raid on Munich - so let's hope you didn't get too attached to this little corner of the world. So yeah, this is a real bummer of a film, but after all, it is a war movie, people dying is kind of the point at the end of the day.
What's relevant to the news of today is all the book burning stuff - we've got people who live in the United States, the country founded on ideals like freedom of the press and freedom of religion who seem to throw the very concept of freedom out the window the second they find out there's a book in their kids' library about gay people or about how Muslims are people too. They somehow think that the only values that should be taught in school are THEIR values, that somehow everyone should be just as narrow-minded as THEY are, when that in fact constitutes the OPPOSITE of freedom. What it really means is that they don't have time to supervise what their kids are reading, so they think it should be the public school's job to ban any book with gay or trans people in it, or people of color, because God forbid their kids learn how other people live and love in the real world. Essentially they want to create a fool's paradise where their children are ignorant and intolerant, but also somehow happy, and that's just not the way things work. The disconnect comes when the religious intolerance is part of the equation, and good Christian folk don't want their kids learning about Muslims or Buddhists or atheists - when the primary commandment in their own religion is "love one another" - and to love one must also tolerate. Anyway, we've got a standing policy of separation of church and state in this country, and those people didn't seem to get THAT memo, either. The schools don't need to enforce any one religion's policies on the kids, in fact that's illegal, and anyway, every religion places emphasis on love and tolerance, why do the conservatives keep forgetting this part of the Bible? Just saying, the book-banners are too dumb to even understand their own religion, apparently.
Aw, now I wish I could have worked my chain out differently, this would have been a great film to watch on Hitler's birthday, which is coming up on 4/20.
Also starring Geoffrey Rush (last seen in "The Banger Sisters"), Sophie Nélisse (last seen in "Pawn Sacrifice"), Nico Liersch, Ben Schnetzer (last seen in "Warcraft"), Heike Makatsch (last seen in "Love Actually"), Barbara Auer, Sandra Nedeleff (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), Hildegard Schroedter (last seen in "The Reader"), Kirsten Block (ditto), Rafael Gareisen, Gotthard Lange (last seen in "Enemy at the Gates"), Rainer Reiners (last seen in "Operation Finale"), Godehard Giese, Oliver Stokowski (last seen in "U-571"), Levin Liam, Carina Wiese, Julian Lehmann, Martin Ontrop (last seen in "Munich"), Carl Heinz Choynski, Rainer Bock (last seen in "A Most Wanted Man"), Mattias Matschke, Mike Maas (last seen in "Anonymous")
with narration by Roger Allam (last seen in "The Woman in Black") and archive footage of Jesse Owens, Adolf Hitler (last seen in "Amsterdam").
RATING: 5 out of 10 Nazi flags on Heaven Street
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