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![\"Rethink](\"\/home\/graphics\/rethink_reviews_small.jpg\")
<\/a>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong> <\/p>\nJonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. <\/em> <\/p>\n
Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant<\/a>. <\/p>\n
THE BOOK THIEF<\/strong><\/p>\n
When I reviewed \u201812 Years A Slave\u2019, I said that it might help America come to grips with the horrors of slavery and our nation\u2019s racist roots if slavery was addressed more often in film the way the Holocaust and Nazism have been portrayed in popular entertainment. Those films left little doubt amongst a worldwide audience, regardless of one\u2019s interest in history, that the Nazis\u2019 goals, beliefs, and methods were an absolute wrong and a crime against humanity. That said, with seemingly every aspect of this tragedy examined exhaustively, is it possible that all the lessons of World War II have been presented and there are no new stories left to tell? And does this explain why would-be Oscar bait like \u2018The Book Thief\u2019, which follows an orphaned girl in a World War II-era German village, feels so mawkish and unnecessary? <\/p>\n
Based on Markus Zusak\u2019s best-selling novel, \u2018The Book Thief\u2019 is about an illiterate 9-year-old girl named Liesel (played by a plucky, big-eyed Sophie N\u00e9lisse) whose communist mother seeks to protect Liesel by sending her to live in an idyllic German village. Her foster parents are Hans, a kind and playful housepainter played by Geoffrey Rush, and Rosa, a mean, brusque laundress played by Emily Watson. With Liesel heartbroken over her absent mother and the death of her younger brother, Hans consoles her by teaching her to read from a book she had stolen.<\/p>\n
Books, as you\u2019d imagine, wind their way throughout \u2018The Book Thief\u2019, as Liesel goes on to steal another book from a book burning rally and more books from the mayor\u2019s wife (played by Barbara Auer), who soothes her sadness over her dead son by giving Liesel access to her personal library. From what I\u2019ve gathered from the novel\u2019s Wikipedia page, the redemptive and destructive power of words is the book\u2019s main theme. Unfortunately, this gets lost among the film\u2019s several subplots, which often makes \u2018The Book Thief\u2019 feel like a curiously sanitized take on some of Holocaust movies\u2019 biggest clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s the subplot of Hans\u2019 refusal to join the Nazi party and the pressure and scrutiny that draws to his family. To further prove Hans\u2019 bona fides as a \u201cgood German\u201d, Hans risks his family\u2019s safety by harboring a war buddy\u2019s Jewish son (played by Ben Schnetzer) in the basement, who befriends Liesel as he\u2019s nursed back to health. Then there\u2019s also the friendship between Liesel and Rudy, a boy next door (played by Nico Liersch) who has a crush on Liesel, though Rudy\u2019s athletic prowess and Aryan looks draw the interest of the Nazis, who select him to attend a special academy that would separate him from Liesel. There\u2019s also the townspeople\u2019s frequent retreats to underground shelters as Allied bombs land on the town, with Liesel comforting people by telling stories. And did I mention that \u2018The Book Thief\u2019 is narrated by Death? That\u2019s right, Death himself (voiced by Roger Allam) as a gentle and bemused Reaper who takes a special interest in Liesel, which is a drag on the story and seems strangely insensitive considering that other thing going on in Germany at the time.<\/p>\n
That thing being the Holocaust, whose horrors only figure lightly and fairly bloodlessly in the film when a group of Jews are marched through the town. But the biggest problem with \u2018The Book Thief\u2019 is it\u2019s complete lack of anything new, informative, or insightful, making it feel like it was written by someone who knew nothing about World War II other than what they\u2019d seen in a handful of movies but really wanted you to know that some Germans during Nazi rule were actually pretty nice \u2014 which has also been covered.<\/p>\n
But maybe the bigger issue is that, after decades and hundreds of movies, maybe there really isn\u2019t anything new to be said about World War II, the Nazis, and the Holocaust that hasn\u2019t been said (and said very well) before, unlike with slavery and the comparatively scant number of dramatic films on the topic. While it\u2019s important to make sure the Holocaust isn\u2019t forgotten, I don\u2019t feel the need to keep watching movies belaboring its lessons to the point of obsession or morbidity. Maybe that\u2019s why a film like \u201812 Years A Slave\u2019 feels so important and needed, while \u2018The Book Thief\u2019, while technically solid, just feels like unnecessary, boilerplate Oscar bait.<\/p>\n
\u2018The Book Thief\u2019 is rated PG-13 and is in select theaters now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38484,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38483\/revisions\/38484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}