Maartje (00:14):
Welcome back to Rosie the Reviewer. This week we are discussing the Book Thief, which came out in 2013. It was directed by Brian Percival and written by Michael Petroni. It’s based on a novel of the same name that came out in two thousand five by Markus Zusak, and it’s the story of a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany, whose family hides a dangerous secret in her basement. It’s available on Disney Plus. What did you think of the movie and the book, Sam?

Sam (00:42):
Yeah, so it was wild to me that I had never read this book before because it came out when I was a teenager, which I feel like a lot of the people that I talked to read it when they were a teenager. And it is I guess you would say it’s YA because the main character is a teenager, but I honestly think there’s something in it for people of every age. Like it’s definitely not a kid’s book. Then I did read it and I like, Well, I understand why it was a number one New York Times bestseller, you know, I understand why everyone loves this book. It is really good. The cool thing about the book and the movie is that it’s framed by death as the narrator. And it’s the reason why I like it so much is that death can be everywhere. So we’re getting a lot of context about World War Two that we wouldn’t have if it was just from the perspective of this one girl growing up. And he’s very fascinated by the story. So we’re getting this kind of like external view of what’s happening, but he’s also at an emotional disconnect because he’s not human, of course. And he himself does not act on the story. He’s a witness. And I think that’s so unusual. And I just love it. I think it’s great. And there’s some really powerful themes in the book and the movie, like the empowerment through words. Liesel, the main character, starts the story and she can’t read. And then it becomes a thing where reading helps save her from her nightmares. Her foster father Hans is reading with her. It helps her build this relationship with Ilsa, the mayor’s wife, that obviously comes in handy for her later. And it even literally saves her life because she’s in the basement writing when, the terrible thing happens that causes this tragedy. And so I just really think, you know, is there a more powerful symbol than her literally snatching a book? From the flames of a Nazi book burning. Like it’s just so well put together and so well articulated. Obviously, this is an anti-war story. The bombs don’t pick and choose between the good guys and the bad guys, between the Hans Hubermanns and the Franz Deutschers. I think that for a YA story, it does this thing that I really like in YA, where it doesn’t shy away from these. Really big upsetting topics. You know, it doesn’t try to insulate kids from what the world is like. It really sweeps the Lego from under you at the end. I cried at the end of both the book and the movie. It was very, very emotionally affecting. In terms of the movie, I did like it. I think it’s one of those where I would have liked it more if I hadn’t read the book first. Because in the movie I find there’s not quite enough of the narrator. Death begins and ends the movie, we don’t get too much of him in the middle, which I think is a shame. And I did find that, you know, just the nature of making a 550 page book into a movie, of course, you’re gonna let some subplots drop and you’re gonna speed things along a little bit. You’re gonna streamline it. And some moments to me felt like they didn’t have enough time to breathe. But overall, really, really enjoyed the book and I think the movie was a pretty fair adaptation. How about you?

Maartje (03:23):
So I started reading the book. As always I’m late so I haven’t finished the book, but I will. That’s how good it is. I only read three chapters or four. It’s got a really visual way of storytelling. There’s a big thing about colours in Death’s description of things. And I wish they’d like pulled that into the movie a bit more. It could have been a little bit more of an artsy movie. It It’s a very effective drama, but it could have taken a bit more of a creative swing. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing that it didn’t. It’s fine the way it is. But then if you’ve read the book you you know the thing about the colours and you’re like, Where the frick are the colours in this movie? There’s very few colours in the movie and I feel like they could have maybe played with it a little bit. But I did enjoy the movie quite a lot. Make me feel things. I was crying before things were happening. It was like, shit. Shit’s going down. I can feel it. So it did a really great job. The acting is great. Jeffrey Rush is in this and he’s just delightful. I feel like he along with the main character, he’s the heart of the movie for me. And I can’t complain about it, really. It’s really good. I’m happy that I enjoyed it so much, but I will be reading the rest of the book, for sure.

Sam (04:39):
Hell yeah. Should we get into the plot?

Maartje (04:41):
Sure, let’s get into the plot

Sam (04:51):
We’re in Nazi Germany. It’s February of nineteen thirty-eight, right before World War Two. And we first get introduced to the narrator who is Death, as we’ve said, voiced by Roger Allam. And we’re soaring above the clouds, and Death informs us of one small fact, you are going to die.

Maartje (05:08):
Can I just say one thing before you read us a passage from the book? This entire thing is fictional, but it’s based on real events, which is what makes it so cool.

Sam (05:18):
Yes, definitely. So here’s a passage from Death’s perspective so you can see how interesting it is to frame the book this way. They’re strange, those wars, full of blood and violence, but also full of stories that are equally difficult to fathom. It’s true, people will mutter, I don’t care if you don’t believe me, it was that fox who saved my life. Or they died on either side of me and I was left standing there. The only one without a bullet between my eyes. Why me? Why me and not them? Hans Hubermann’s story was a little bit like that. When I found it within the book thief’s words, I realized that we passed each other once in a while during that period, though neither of us scheduled a meeting. Personally, I had a lot of work to do. As for Hans, I think he was doing his best to avoid me. The first time we were in the vicinity of each other, I Hans was twenty two years old, fighting in France. The majority of young men in his platoon were eager to fight. Hans wasn’t so sure. I had taken a few of them along the way, but you could say I never even came close to touching Hans Hubermann. He was either too lucky or he deserved to live, or there was a good reason for him to live. In the army, he didn’t stick out at either end. He ran in the middle, climbed in the middle, and he could shoot straight enough so as to not affront his superiors. Nor did he excel enough to be one of the first chosen to run straight at me. A small but noteworthy note I’ve seen so many young men over the years who think they’re running at other young men.

Maartje (06:40):
Ooh, that last line is so effective. Goosebumps immediately. It’s so creative too. Our death is this like omniscient, all knowing being just reminding us that war is utterly pointless and that we’re not fighting each other, we’re really only fighting death. And it’s so great.

Sam (06:43):
Right. Yes. Yeah.

Maartje (07:00):
So we do get a little bit of World War One from Hans’s sort of memories of it and the way he talks about it, but not in great detail. In the movie especially, I think. But it’s just a such an interesting perspective for once to start in Nazi Germany in a town that is proper Nazi too. And you’re like, wait. Are these people the good guys? And you realize that yes, they are. There are people good and bad in every single village. And I thought that was really interesting.

Sam (07:29):
Yeah. Definitely.

Maartje (07:31):
A woman and two children are travelling by train through a wintry countryside. The younger child dies of an illness and the older child continues on to the town of Molching where she is to be adopted. Her name is Liesel and she’s our main character. She’s played by Sophie Nélisse. At her brother’s burial she steals her first book, which is a gravedigger’s handbook, which I thought was funny for a child. What a book to steal. And we say steal, she finds it and picks it up and takes it with her.

Sam (08:00):
Yes. Very fitting book to read in this novel where death is so intertwined with everything.

Maartje (08:06):
In the book Death reminds us that Liesel is blonde, but she does have brown eyes, she’s not Germany’s ideal looking young girl. Which just tickled me that there was a little detail that they pointed out in the book.

Sam (08:20):
Yes, there’s such rich tapestry of what the day to day is like. Even just all the little details are pretty extraordinary. The author must have done a ton of research.

Maartje (08:29):
There’s one thing in the very beginning of the book where Death explains how the book thief, which is Liesel, gets her books and he explains one of them as being on a a light yellow afternoon, which I thought was just so enjoyable. I can just imagine what that would look like. Yeah.

Sam (08:49):
Right. I know. And there’s a a through line too where he refers to Liesel’s friend Rudy as a boy with hair the color of lemons. And yeah, I just think that’s so it’s so descriptive and it’s so devastating at the end when he says something like Rudy whose hair would be the color of lemons forever

Maartje (09:06):
It hurts.

Sam (09:07):
I know.

Maartje (09:07):
At the same time it’s such a childlike thing to do to refer to things by their colour, even though death is not a child. This is like what’s that movie with Brad Pitt where he plays death? Meet Joe Black is what it’s called. And he also speaks in a similar kind of way. Which I thought is just interesting. Death is just this really strange thing as a narrator and again, I wish it wasn’t a movie more.

Sam (09:32):
Yeah, me too. And I like that Death isn’t a frightening or malicious figure. You know, when Death comes and collects the souls of people, he talks about carrying them in his arms or Hans Hubermann’s soul was one that sat up to meet him and that kind of stuff. It’s really just this almost comforting thing of how death is waiting there at the end, in that when you die you don’t die alone kind of thing?

Maartje (09:58):
Yeah, and it’s also inevitable and you don’t have to fear it because there’s no point. I really enjoyed it. Anyway, that’s the last time I’ll be saying that because I can say it for the entirety of the movie and the book, but you know, people will get it.

Sam (10:11):
Liesel’s new parents are the kindly musician and painter, Hans Hubermann, played by Jeffrey Rush, and the strict laundress, Rosa Hubermann, played by Emily Watson. And I had read that the author of the book, Marcus Zusak he had been a painter at one time, as well as an English teacher, and I thought it just kind of lovely to see him interweaving pieces of his life into the story like that. Her new neighbor, Rudy Steiner, played by Nico Liersch. Will walk her to school and become her new best friend. And Rudy is such a just you know, when you’re a kid, you just hope for a friend like that. You know, someone who’s in your corner, who is very stalwart and good hearted and just a good kid, you know? And we soon learn that Liesel struggles to read, but willingly stands up for herself against bullies, including the spiteful Franz Deutscher, played by Levin Liam, whom we will see again because he leads Rudy’s Hitler youth group.

Maartje (11:04):
He calls Liesel Dummkopf, which is literally means you stupid head in German. And it’s so mean. And in the movie they all call her Saumensch which comes from Rosa. Rosa calls her Saumensch and Sau is a pig and it’s kind of saying someone is kinda dirty. It’s kind of a mean word, but it becomes this really affectionate thing because they all call her it, and it’s so cute.

Sam (11:12):
Yeah. Yes.

Maartje (11:29):
Hitler Youth Groups, we’ve talked about this before in our episode about Jojo Rabbit, so if you want to learn more you can listen to that. But just to give you an idea, before the war millions of German children had already been pressured into joining but they became legally compulsory in March of nineteen thirty nine. When all eligible boys and girls between the ages of ten and eighteen were required to join. Boys were mostly trained in military drills and marching and the Nazi ideology and Girls were joined the League of German girls, translated really, where they were taught mostly domestic skills and the girls to prepare for motherhood in a German ideology way, very scary. And they often had very nationalist anthems, which we see Liesel sing in this movie, and it just gave me the creeps

Sam (12:19):
Yeah, definitely you can see here how the Nazis incorporated misogyny into their laws. You know, when we think of people who were oppressed in Nazi Germany, of course there are the obvious groups, but there was also this very strong social push for women to not work, to stay at home and be ideal German wives and ideal German mothers.

Maartje (12:40):
Yeah, I read some testimonies of Dutch girls who had joined the Hitler Jugend in the Netherlands. And they did say it enriched their lives. Like they felt like they belonged in these groups and there was a real sense of community. And all that is true. Like they did feel like they belonged somewhere. But at the same time they were being effectively brainwashed by the Nazis. So fun.

Sam (13:03):
Yeah, and that’s part of this whole thing about having a unified German culture. We’re all gonna look the same, we’re all gonna act the same, we’re all gonna do the same stuff.

Maartje (13:11):
We’re all wearing uniforms as well. Both the girls and the boys. The boys were all black and the girls had like a like a brownish uniform. And it’s just so scary to me. I can understand wanting to belong to a group to a collective, but I wonder at what age you start to realize what is happening to you. Maybe because you joined so young and because very often your family will be part of the national party. I doubt you’d know what was happening to you realistically.

Sam (13:41):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there’s a part where Rudy paints himself black because he’s such a big fan of Jesse Owens, the Olympic runner, who won so many medals in the nineteen thirty-six Nazi Olympics. And Hitler, you know, the whole thing about how Hitler refused to shake his hand and you know, everyone was quite amazed that you know a black man could defeat the Aryans and everything like that. And so Rudy paints himself black and he runs a race and his father’s trying to explain to him why he can’t be out in public wanting to be a black man and Rudy just doesn’t understand it.

Maartje (14:14):
He’s like why he’s so cool. If you wanna know more about Jesse Owens, by the way we talked about him in our episode about Unbroken, so you can listen to that too.

Sam (14:25):
Nice.

Maartje (14:25):
Hans decides to teach Liesel how to read, and they soon begin reading the book that she stole in her brother’s burial called Gravedigger’s Handbook. As time passes, Kristallnacht occurs in Stuttgart in November of nineteen thirty eight. I would like to remind you that we’ve talked about Kristalnacht also before in our Munich the Edge of War episode, so you can listen to that. But if you haven’t listened to it yet, I’ll give you a slight summary. It’s very important to remember that what happened to the Jewish population in Germany didn’t really happen overnight. Kristallnacht was a big night but it happened long before that. When Jewish people had already been stripped of many of their rights and faced years of discrimination under Nazi rule with the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws, but on the night of the ninth to the tenth of November nineteen thirty eight, the Nazis launched a coordinated wave of violence where they burned lots of synagogues and destroyed Jewish businesses and arrested around thirty thousand Jewish men. It really was a turning point to open state sponsored violence and it paved the way for the rest of the Holocaust. And it’s gross.

Sam (15:32):
Yeah. The way they do it in the movie will send a shiver down your spine because there’s a children’s choir that Liesel is in and they’re singing this song that sounds beautiful if you don’t speak German, but the words are very like you know, nationalistic and anti Semitic. And then as you’re hearing this music you’re seeing Jewish people being dragged out of their homes and beaten in the street.

Maartje (15:48):
Mm.

Sam (15:56):
It’s quite the dichotomy there.

Maartje (15:57):
Yeah.

Sam (15:57):
A young Jewish man named Max Vandenburg, played by Ben Schnetzer, is urged to flee to safety by a close friend. And you see the friend briefly in the movie. He’s clearly a member of the Nazi Party, but obviously feels that these personal ties that he has with Max are worth you know, putting himself at risk because he’s helping a Jewish man to get away. Max dreads leaving his family and feels guilty over his relief that he will be safe, even if his family won’t be. He is headed for a safe haven where one of his father’s old war buddies awaits.

Maartje (16:30):
I wonder I wonder who that could be.

Sam (16:33):
Ha ha ha.

Maartje (16:34):
It’s april nineteen thirty nine. Liesel attends a book burning as part of a parade for Hitler’s birthday. She manages to snatch her second book in the movie from the flames, and she’s seen doing so by Ilsa Hermann played by Barbara Auer who’s the mayor’s wife, and you’re like wait, she looks kind of suspicious. Is this woman gonna be a danger to this girl?

Sam (16:57):
Yes.

Maartje (16:58):
So this happens in nineteen thirty nine, but it started way earlier. One of the biggest bookburning incidents happened in May of nineteen thirty three, so right before the war, when pro Nazi university students organized book burnings across Germany, on the tenth of May alone students in dozens of university towns burned tens of thousands of books they labelled quote unquote on German and these books included works by Jewish, socialists, pacifists and other politically unacceptable writers, And propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels attended one of the book burnings in Berlin, he speeched The age of excessive Jewish intellectualism is now over, and the breakthrough of the German Revolution has also cleared a path for the German way. Just to like give you a sense of how early the extermination of the Jewish way of thinking was starting already. Like this was way before the war.

Sam (17:54):
Yeah, and it just it makes the choice to have Liesel start effectively illiterate and then for her to become so empowered through words, just so effective because she’s living in this society where the Nazis know full well the power that books have and the power that ideas have, and they’re doing their best to stifle that.

Maartje (18:15):
If anything, seeing this again in a movie but also reading about it on the internet, book burnings, it just reminds me that I have to keep reading more books. It’s so important to keep reading and to expand your horizons l through books and writing. And also to read books by people that aren’t from the same circles as you are. Like it’s really important.

Sam (18:31):
Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. It opens up a whole world to you that you might not otherwise know. And I just you’re never on the right side of history if you’re burning books, are you?

Maartje (18:46):
No, it’s such a stupid disgusting thing to do. Also, can I just say I will never listen to the German national anthem the same way? I just have never realized the words to the national anthem before until this movie. I was like, wait this is really nationalistic in a really gross way. I guess most national anthems are, but this just sounded really aggressive.

Sam (19:10):
Yeah, definitely. The title translates to something like Germany over everything, right?

Maartje (19:15):
Yes Yep Yep.

Sam (19:16):
Max arrives at the Huberman residence weak from his flight to safety. Obviously, he wasn’t having much to eat. He couldn’t risk you know, interacting with too many people. In the book, they make it clearer that Hans actually mails him a copy of Mein Kampf with their house key taped to the inside. And so he figures, you know, it’s a copy of Mein Kampf. The people who are checking the mail are not gonna think it’s suspicious. And so when Max is traveling on the train, he’s reading this copy of Mein Kampf because he figures if people see me reading this, they’ll assume I’m not suspicious. So it’s quite novel that he was able to use, you know, this this book that is the absolute symbol and pinnacle of Nazism to get to safety. But yes, Hans makes Liesel promise that she will not tell anyone about his presence in their home. He’s very firm about that. And Rosa is initially not pleased about harboring Max for obvious reasons. It’s extremely dangerous. The whole family could be taken away. And they also barely have any food to feed themselves. But Hans reminds her that they owe his family because Max’s father saved Hans’s life in World War One.

Maartje (20:20):
I wish they had explained a little more in the movie about the connection beforehand because when Max comes to the door, he asks Hans Do you still play the accordion? And I was like, What does that what does that mean? But I guess it means are you still okay to receive me in some way?

Sam (20:40):
Yeah. Yeah.

Maartje (20:40):
And I just I didn’t really understand what the connection was until later.

Sam (20:45):
Yeah. This other guy saved Hans’s life in World War One and was himself killed. And Hans kept a hold of this guy’s accordion throughout the war. And at the end he went to Max’s mother to be like, Hey, your husband saved my life. Do you want this accordion back? And she was like, Actually, he’s a music teacher. I have a ton of them, so you can keep that one. And Hans went on through the rest of his life and he actually He’s having trouble getting painting jobs because one of the things that he would do is that when Jewish businesses had slurs spray painted on them, he would go and paint over the slurs. And so people viewed that as him behaving in like an anti German way. So he wasn’t getting a lot of work as a painter, but he could always find work here and there as a musician. And so he would go to bars and restaurants and that kind of thing and he would play the accordion.

Maartje (21:30):
Yeah, I really like him playing the accordion. It’s such a little sign of hope for so many people. Anyway, I wanted to talk a little bit about food rationing because we know that happened all over Europe quite a bit. But it also happened in Germany. So Germany introduced food rationing at the very start of the war in nineteen thirty nine and it quickly became a part of everyday life. And it became

Sam (21:37):
Yeah.

Maartje (21:57):
More serious as the war progressed. Families needed coupons to buy basic things like bread, meat, butter and sugar. And the rations kept getting smaller and smaller. Which is why it’s so amazing for this family to harbor a fugitive, because they barely have any food themselves. And this system didn’t even end when the war ended either, because as the war ended, food supplies had collapsed and rationing continued under the occupying powers and not unlike in the Netherlands, although in a different year, the winter of forty six to forty seven became known as the Hunger Winter in Germany.

Sam (22:34):
Yeah, the British continued rationing for quite a while after the war as well. Like it’s really hard to overstate how badly this decimated, you know, all of these countries that were heavily involved and who had to go through six years of war really trying to support not only their population but also an army.

Maartje (22:52):
I haven’t written it down in this bit specifically, but I think German food fashioning lasted until like fifty three or something, like a really long time as well.

Sam (23:03):
Yeah, yeah, it’s wild.

Maartje (23:04):
Liesel begins to deliver laundry on Rosa’s behalf and one of the addresses she goes to is the mayor’s house, where Ilsa, the woman we saw catching her steal a book before, invites her inside to show her that she has a vast library that she’s collected, and this allows Liesel to read as many books as she would like. Liesel learns about Ilsa’s secret grief because her son died in World War One.

Sam (23:30):
Yes, and he was the one who really loved to read, so she really sees him in Liesel

Maartje (23:34):
Yeah, and this whole library is like a shrine to him basically and I really like the initial tense feeling in the movie when she goes to the mayor’s house and she enters the house. Rudy’s with her, by the way, but he’s the right outside. Poor Rudy. He’s her following her around like a puppy. But it’s so sweet.

Sam (23:56):
Yes, it is. He has a big ol’ puppy love crush on her and he’s very sweet about it. He’s constantly trying to they’ll they’ll be like, Let’s have a race and he’ll be like, if I win you have to kiss me and you know, of course she calls him a saumensch and everything, but it’s it’s it’s sweet.

Maartje (24:12):
And he never wins.

Sam (24:14):
No. When Max’s health improves, he is moved to the basement. It’s safer for him to be down there. Obviously he won’t be walking by the windows and people won’t be able to see in. He and Liesel spend time chatting and getting to know one another. However, soon Liesel’s fortunes turn when the mayor discovers her reading in the library and kicks her out, as well as terminates his laundry service with Rosa. And now that they’re starting to lose laundry clients, the family really struggles to get by. And this is one of the parts that I kind of wished that they had done it more like in the book, because what happens in the book is that Liesel is at the mayor’s house and the mayor’s wife tells her that they can’t afford to do the laundry anymore. And then Liesel just flips her shit on this woman and is like All you do is sit in here and brood about your dead son and you guys don’t have any money, but we have even less money and she’s just like losing it on her right? And so she goes home and she has to tell Rosa we lost the mayor as a client. And Rosa’s like, Why? And Liesel knows that the real reason is that the mayor and his wife are trying to save money, but she doesn’t want Rosa to feel bad. So she says, it’s because I yelled at her. And Rosa’s like -huh, sure it is. And she’s No, it really is and Rosa knows that Liesel’s trying to protect her feelings and it’s kind of like a tender little moment.

Maartje (25:31):
That’s so interesting that they’ve changed that. Like they kept Liesel a lot more innocent, I guess, in a way too. She’s innocent in this entire movie. Like there’s not a thing about her that’s the least bit What’s the word I’m trying to think of a word? There’s not a combative bone in her body, even though even the act of really is such a combative thing in this Germany. And I think it would have been nice to have her show a little bit more character. Can I just talk about Max? I love Max. That’s all I wanted to say. I love this character and I love

Sam (25:57):
Yeah, I don’t disagree. Yeah.

Maartje (26:05):
How he becomes like a brother to her, like the brother that she lost, except he’s older, and I really enjoy their conversations and what I do like about them and I’m sure it’s even better in the book is that they They discuss what it means to be German and they discuss Hitler together and it’s just really interesting to have a little heart to heart between these two characters who are effectively on different sides of that coin because Liesel we should probably mention Liesel’s father is a communist or was a communist. We don’t know where he is, I don’t think. He’s probably dead. And her mother is at this point probably also dead maybe, we don’t know. But people don’t know that she’s the daughter of a communist. So she gets to live her life the German way while Max has to hide. I I really enjoy the dynamic between the two.

Sam (26:58):
Yeah. And so many of the relationships are just so good because in a way they’re both outcasts too and they are able to reach each other in that way. And it’s it’s the same thing with her thing with Ilsa. You know, Ilsa is also someone who is really struggling to get by in a different way. And even though they live in this very strict enforced society, they’re still finding ways to connect to each other on a human level.

Maartje (27:23):
Yeah. It’s a very human movie, I would say. And that’s so funny with the again with the narrator being Death. He just tells these human little stories.

Sam (27:33):
Yeah.

Maartje (27:34):
It’s December nineteen forty one. The family spends a pleasant Christmas together, making a snowman in the basement and having a snowball fight in the basement. And Max has made Liesel a little Christmas present and it’s a journal made out of the Mein Kampf book because he has taken Hans’s paint supplies and painted out all the evil words and put in it a little inscription for Liesel and he tells her that she has to write the words now and one of the things they do in the basement is he asks her to describe the day to him in her words and it becomes this really important thing between them. But as they are celebrating Christmas The news from outside isn’t very good for Max because Germany appears to be winning the war and Liesel’s like Isn’t it good that we’re winning? And Max is like looking at her like all knowing obviously and she’s just a kid and she’s fairly innocent and it’s just so sad.

Sam (28:34):
Yeah. Max becomes seriously ill from sleeping in the damp, cold basement. Liesel fears for him and begins to steal books from the mayor’s house to read to him. And one of the things that’s made more clear in the book, I think, is that the window in the library is always open. So Ilsa knows that Liesel is going in and stealing books and she’s letting it happen. And Rudy catches her out. And he’s so funny because he’s like, You’re going in there and stealing books? What about food? Yeah, and then they have a little altercation with our Hitler youth nemesis here, Franz. He tosses her journal that Max made her into the river, and Rudy goes and jumps into the river and rescues it for her. And she ends up telling Rudy about Max. And he is agrees to keep his mouth shut.

Maartje (29:18):
I got a little nervous about this, to be honest. I was like, Is this boy whose father’s in the Nazi party gonna keep his mouth shut? But he does. He’s a very good boy.

Sam (29:30):
Yes.

Maartje (29:30):
The family have a terrifying brush with the Nazis when they come door to door checking basements. You’re like, shit, are they checking basements for people? But because Hans is pretty smart, he covers Max underneath the Nazi flag that he keeps in the basement and they do not discover him and it turns out that they are in fact checking the suitability of various basements. To use them as air shelters and they also say Huh, your basement isn’t good enough, so we’re leaving. In the same scene when one of the Nazi party members comes to the door and checks the basement, he also reminds Hans that it’s never too late to join a Nazi party, the NSDAP. And many others in the street have. He’s probably one of the only ones in the street. And it’s one of the reasons why he hasn’t got much work left and also why Rosa has to do rich people’s laundry as the Nazi guy likes to remind them. And by the late 30s and beyond, party membership could affect things like your job, your reputation, and whether or not people trusted you. So you can imagine that refusing to join marked you as suspicious from the outset. And The party worked through local officials, had the youth groups, did rallies, gathered donations, had uniforms, and everyday rituals obviously like the Nazi salute in the street.

Sam (30:53):
Yeah, in the book it’s a little different. Hans initially resisted joining the party and then when it became clear that they were struggling to survive, he actually put in an application to join. But at that point the party was suspicious of him. So every time he asked, they were like, it’s still processing and they just kind of held it over his head, you know, you better act right or you’re not gonna get your party membership.

Maartje (31:16):
I wonder if the movie tried to make Hans a little bit more of a black and white good guy in the movie just to make it easier for especially younger people I suppose to understand. Even though as an adult I would have enjoyed the little complication of him trying to see what’s right for his family and how they could survive and I also how they could keep Max hidden in the basement. Because that’s one of the reasons, I suppose. If they don’t have any money or any food, like Max is also going to starve.

Sam (31:47):
Well that’s the thing too, right? Like on the day of the Hitler’s birthday parade, they’re looking everywhere for their Nazi flag because everyone is expected to hang this flag in the window. And if you don’t do that, that marks you out as suspicious and they really have to toe the line and look like they’re following the rules, otherwise they put Max at risk and they put their whole family at risk.

Maartje (32:08):
I just like how Hans in the movie how Jeffrey Rush plays him so like blasse, he’s like, yeah, that thing, I have it somewhere, I’ll go find it later. He’s like, you know what, I’ll do it later.

Sam (32:20):
Yeah. Max soon wakes up from his illness, much to the family’s joy. There’s a really sweet moment where Rosa goes to Liesel’s school and pulls her out of class under the guise of admonishing her for some transgression at home. So she pulls her out of class and she’s like, Where did you put my hairbrush? Blah blah blah. And then as soon as they’re, you know, in relative privacy, she tells her that Max has woken up and Liesel’s of course extremely overjoyed to hear it. And Liesel also experiences her first air raid, so they obviously have to go to a neighbor’s house that has a deep enough basement and it’s them and most of the people on their street huddled and hearing the bombs falling outside.

Maartje (32:57):
Lovely Hans playing the accordion to make them feel at ease.

Sam (33:02):
Yes, it’s very lovely.

Maartje (33:03):
Like you could look at this film and see like these people have all joined the party, they’re all evil but they’re also all scared. And I I think it’s a it’s such a a good reminder that we’re all human and that we do many things for many reasons, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t feel scared of being bombed. It’s so human. I really enjoyed that we get to witness that. Hans witnesses that Jewish neighbor being taken away. He speaks up in the man’s offense, which turns out to be a grave error because they take his name and he’s like, god, they’ve taken my name. Why did I do that? Why are you a good man, Hans? Really? I just it broke my heart a little bit. But it also means that Max has to leave in case the Nazis come to take Hans away because he’s on a list now. And the second blow then eventually comes when Hans is conscripted into the army and even Rudy, first sweet Rudy, is chosen to go away for special training by the Nazis. And he’s so scared

Sam (34:05):
Yeah, I think in the book, they live kind of near Dachau, and so periodically there are parades of Jewish people being driven through the streets by the Nazis toward the concentration camp, and Hans tries to give a guy some bread or something like that, and then Liesel and Rudy decide that they’re gonna start doing that too. So the next time there’s a parade of Jewish people that come through the town. Liesel and Rudy both hide in the bushes and then they run out among all the Jewish people and they’re trying to hand out bread and then they try and run back and hide again.

Maartje (34:33):
My god, so innocent, right? So so innocently good as children they still are. But such a risk too, like I wonder if they realize the risk that they are taking.

Sam (34:45):
Yeah. And at the same time you think, because they are children, they might be likely to get a little more slack. So in a way it’s safer for them to do it than it is for adults to do it. But yeah, obviously a massive risk, it’s you know, one of those things where kids don’t really perceive long term consequences.

Maartje (35:01):
Yeah, exactly.

Sam (35:02):
November nineteen forty-two, Rudy decides to run away rather than face going with the Nazis for this special training program, but he changes his mind. And this unfortunately has the result that his father ends up being conscripted into the army, even though, like Hans, he is probably too old to fight. Liesel begins to tell stories in the air aid shelters to comfort her neighbors using storytelling skills she learned from Hans and Max. And We see Hans he’s in a terrible accident while working in bombing cleanup. The truck that he’s in ends up rolling over a few times and you get a little bit concerned.

Maartje (35:37):
A little bit I was like screaming at the TV. I was like, No, not Hans Also, Liesel’s telling stories in the air raid shelter as a replacement of Hans playing the accordion. Struck a chord with me. I was like, my god. She’s learned from her foster father, who’s effectively her dad at this point. He’s still loving to her. I feel like in the book it’s probably even more In detail, the movie’s kind of I guess they are a little careful because this is an older man and a little girl and it could be a little bit icky if you film it the wrong way, but I think in a book he’s very affectionate with her a lot of the time. And I just just the idea of him dying of just like screaming at the television.

Sam (36:22):
In the book you get more detail about the work that Hans is doing. So he’s obviously an older dude. They don’t send him to the front. He ends up going around to these various cities that have been bombed, and their job is to shore up buildings that are in danger of collapse and to try and pull people out of the rubble and to try and do a bit of cleanup. So still a dangerous job in its own right. And the interesting thing about getting it from Death’s perspective is that On the day the truck rolls over, normally Hans sits in the back. And because he’s had this little not quite argument, I would say, but he kind of he beats another guy at cards or something like that. And the guy is like, Well, let’s switch seats, I wanna sit there now. And then because of that, that guy dies when the truck rolls over, but Hans survives. And because we’re getting it from Death’s perspective, Death is telling us the whole time, like, you know, I had another brush up against Hans Hubermann, but you know, he got away from me again, kind of thing.

Maartje (37:15):
That’s so fun. God, this book is so how do you come up with this shit? That’s so fun. There’s a let’s a quip about where one of the other soldiers, that is with Hans makes a quip about They’re enacting conscription on their grandfathers now. So they’re being kind of mean, but again, it’s one of those things But like you said, Hans does survive and he comes home and it’s a very joyous moment for Liesel. But then there’s another merch to Dachau by Jewish people in the street. And she because Max has left, she’s now looking for him in the crowd. Which is also again very dangerous, but she doesn’t find him. And she begins to write a diary that she hopes w to one day turn into a book, which reminds me of Anne Frank, who also wrote a diary with the idea of turning it into a book.

Sam (38:08):
Yeah, and it’s powerful that she’s writing this story of her life, and about this compassion and care that she feels for this Jewish man on what was the pages of of Mein Kampf. Man, this author does a really good job of pulling everything together.

Maartje (38:23):
I think in the book doesn’t Max give her two books? I don’t remember the other one, but

Sam (38:30):
Yeah. Max also writes her a story called The Word Shaker, about a little girl who lives in a forest and all the trees are full of hateful words and hateful slogans. And one day she finds a seed and she plants it and her tree starts growing and it’s full of kind words. And the Nazis come and try and cut the tree down, but she climbs the tree and she’s like, I’m not coming down, I’m not letting you cut the tree down. And because of that, other trees start to grow that have, you know, kind words in them and that kind of stuff. And it’s really lovely.

Maartje (39:02):
It’s about her and the power of words and the power of writing.

Sam (39:06):
A mistaken bombing of their neighborhood occurs one night. They obviously live in a residential area and it’s just a result of a night bombing that happens. This happened quite a lot where the British would fly at night and they weren’t super concerned about hitting the target. It was more about keeping their own pilots safe. So their neighborhood gets decimated and death comes for everyone. Liesel, shattered by the deaths of her adoptive parents, arrives at Rudy’s side in time to watch him die, and Ilsa, the mayor’s wife, turns up, having heard of the destruction and ends up taking Liesel in.

Maartje (39:43):
Boy, this scene I was crying so hard Jesus Christ because Liesel was also saying to Rudy as he was playing, I’ll kiss you now wake up and it’s just so sad.

Sam (39:55):
Yeah. So the first and last time she kissed him.

Maartje (39:58):
I know it’s so so t just heart wrenching. And she’s also caught under the rubble and they hear her because she plays the accordion or she moves the accordion, she doesn’t really play it. But for some reason she was right there with Hans’s accordion. And I had such hopes that Hans and Rosa would survive, but then I should have listened to Death because he kind of did warn us. About it beforehand.

Sam (40:23):
Yep, one small fact you’re going to die.

Maartje (40:25):
And when we say everyone, it’s literally Rudy’s entire family except for his father, I think, too, that dies.

Sam (40:33):
Yeah, ’cause his father’s away fighting, right?

Maartje (40:36):
Right. It’s another one of those turns of fate, I guess, where he’s conscripted into the army because of something that Rudy did. My god, that’s so sad.

Sam (40:45):
Yeah. Yeah. And obviously Rudy feels terrible about it when it happens, but it ended up saving his life.

Maartje (40:53):
Yep. Except Rudy will never know. That’s also so sad.

Sam (40:58):
Yeah. And what I did like about this was that it’s just so indicative of the you know, war is never about all the soldiers that die. It’s about the collateral damage too. I mean, when you look at the deaths in Europe during World War Two, it was like sixty million people died but forty five million of them were civilians. And so it’s, you know, regardless of which side you’re on, it’s the families that are destroyed, it’s the women and children and the old people that end up being killed, just because they happen to be there, you know?

Maartje (41:26):
Life sniffed out in a matter of a second for an ideology they may or may not believe in. It doesn’t discriminate in that sense either, there are literally only losers in war.

Sam (41:34):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Maartje (41:40):
Two years later, as US troops occupied Germany in nineteen forty five, Liesel was working in Rudy’s father’s shop. I for a second got a little bit of a weird feeling about her working in Rudy’s father’s shop because I Wondered how much of a Nazi Rudy’s father was? Like his mother clearly didn’t agree with the ideology, but we don’t actually see his father disagree with anything.

Sam (42:06):
Yeah, I think in the book you get more of a sense that he goes along to get along, like I think a lot of people did.

Maartje (42:12):
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean otherwise I don’t think Liesel would have worked there either. But also Liesel doesn’t really understand at least not in a movie, I don’t think you get that sense that she understands what’s going on really in the war. Like she doesn’t grasp what is happening to people quite as much.

Sam (42:33):
Like yes and no, because there’s the part where when she realizes that she asks Hans, Did the Fuhrer take my mother away? And Hans says yes, and she says, I well I hate the Fuhrer and he tells her, You can’t say that ’cause people can’t hear you saying that. And then there’s a part where when Rudy tries to run away, the two of them are standing on the side of a lake yelling, We hate Hitler

Maartje (42:41):
Yes. Yeah. Like real children, again not realizing that if anyone had heard them they might be in trouble. Huh.

Sam (43:01):
Right. Even as children, they have this innate sense of fairness and the fact that bad things are happening to people that they know, you know, it it upsets them, regardless of whether or not they have a great sense of, you know, the overall ideology and that kind of stuff.

Maartje (43:07):
Yeah. Meanwhile, you have Franz Deutscher who’s the very like almost caricature Hitler Jugend evil German boy.

Sam (43:26):
Yeah. And he’s such a shithead. Like in the book, he decides he just has it out for Rudy. So anytime Rudy stands up for another kid, he makes him run laps in the mud and makes him get all dirty and that kind of stuff. So he’s just a bully, which I think is really at the heart of a lot of this Nazi shit, you know?

Maartje (43:43):
Big bullies, really big bullies. And also, as Liesel’s working in the shop, Max returns and you’re like, yeah, he survived.

Sam (43:46):
Yeah. Yes, I was very happy that Max survived the war.

Maartje (43:55):
I really like Max’s actor too. I thought he was quite good.

Sam (43:59):
Yes. And even, you know, Max survives the war, but even in that, you know, he’s not unaffected because his entire family has been killed and he carries this guilt with him that he was able to get to safety and they were not.

Maartje (44:12):
Yeah, there was a part of me that thought he wasn’t returning that he had died because of what Death had said about him dying earlier in the movie. So maybe that was on purpose thinking about it now, kind of to give you a little misdirection about when he dies.

Sam (44:30):
Death takes us forward in time to when he finally comes for Liesel, after a long life during which she published many books and had a flourishing friendship with Max. He explains that he doesn’t often take an interest in human lives, but every now and again a human makes him interested in the art of living.

Maartje (44:47):
And that’s the end of the movie.

Sam (44:48):
Yeah, this is actually the part that made me shed a tear where he talks about, you know, the loss of Rudy, the boy who would have the hair the color of lemons forever. And he talks about how she was friends with Max almost to the end of her life. Not quite, but almost. So you you know that Max lived a long time too. Yeah, just imagining this girl who lived such a difficult life growing up and able to still flourish and make the best of the lessons that she learned from the good people in her life.

Maartje (45:15):
It made me think too about Anne Frank and what her life would have looked like if she’d survived because she died so close to the liberation of that camp. It’s scary to me. And just imagine if she’d lived. I wonder if her diaries would have made such a splash if she’d lived.

Sam (45:34):
I don’t know. It’s also a thing where I mean, I’m sure you remember being a teenage girl. I wrote a lot of stuff when I was a teenager that I would never want to see the light of day. So I almost wonder if she would have been like, I’m not publishing this

Maartje (45:41):
Yeah. Maybe. Although I do find when you read her diaries, and we’ll be talking about Anne Frank in an upcoming episode at some point. But when you read her diaries, on the one hand it’s a very fourteen year old girl kind of diary. On the other hand, she’s very conscious of what she’s writing. And she rewrites it three times in total. And you’re like, Wow, I don’t remember being that Concious of my own writing at fourteen?

Sam (46:11):
Yeah. I reread it recently because as you say, we’re going to be talking about it really soon, but there are so many big teenager feelings in that book that I just remember that too. You know, being in high school and feeling like, this is the whole world and it’s never going to change and this is how things are and you’re furious at your parents. I mean, in her case especially, it’s not like she can go out and blow off steam. She’s stuck in a little annex with these people. And she writes so many things about her relationship with her mother and her sister and that kind of stuff that I think had she survived the war and had the time to mature, the published version might have looked different. But as it is, she’s frozen in time. She’s a teenage girl forever. And so we do get to see these at times very immature expressions of emotion, but I think that’s what makes it more poignant.

Maartje (46:57):
Yeah. If it’s such a like frozen image of the war too, because it’s the war through the eyes of a girl and it’ll always be that. And you’re right. I do wonder if she would have even wanted it published, like you said, if she’d survived, but we’ll never know. Anyway, I don’t have any extra notes. We put all the notes in the plot line for you today, so I think we have to rate this movie, but before we do I’d like to remind you that you can follow us wherever you get your podcast and rate us five stars or even write us a review or you can send this episode to a friend. Every time you send his episode to a friend, that’s one less book burned.

Sam (47:45):
Yes. Save books from being burned, people.

Maartje (47:46):
Excellent. Yes. What should we rate this movie out of?

Sam (47:50):
Should we rate it Saumensches out of ten?

Maartje (47:52):
Sure, let’s rate it Saumensches out of ten. You go first. How many Saumensches out of ten would you rate this movie?

Sam (47:58):
I’m going to give it an eight Saumensches out of ten. I think I would rate it a little higher if I hadn’t read the book first, which is not to say that it’s a bad adaptation. It’s just that the book is so good. Al there’s always gonna be a few shortfalls when the book is that good. You’re always gonna be like, nah, the book’s better than the movie, you know? But just some absolutely standout acting performances. Emily Watson and Jeffrey Rush are incredible. The child actors are really good too. I feel like they put together some scenes in ways that were really effective, you know, l the way we talked about the bit with the choir and Kristallnacht and that kind of stuff, and it just makes it even more devastating. It just carries the point home even further. So I think it is a well made film. And I definitely would recommend for people to watch it, even if you’re not into World War Two stuff, because it’s also a very human story. What about you?

Maartje (48:45):
Having not read the book well, having read part of the book but not the entire book, I’m not yet burdened by knowing everything that happens in the book, so I will rate it eight and a half Saumensches out of ten. But I will be reading the book and I wonder if I will feel differently after I finish. I would like to recommend both of the things to everyone. I think everyone should read this book and I’m really surprised that I haven’t read it either because it’s right up my alley. And it’s a fairly long book but it reads really smoothly, so it goes by quickly. Speaking of reading, are you reading anything new?

Sam (49:23):
I’m reading The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis, and we’re gonna be talking about that pretty soon because they made a movie out of that as well. And it’s kind of a unique one because it’s told mostly from the perspective of these Nazis who run a concentration camp, but definitely not in a way that makes you empathize with them. Like, don’t worry about that on that front, but just Just a really interesting perspective, I guess. And it’s it’s a really good book. I’m getting through it pretty quickly, so

Maartje (49:52):
Is it nonfiction or is fiction? Alright, interesting. And in that episode we will also have a guest on which it has been a while. Like we’ve had a guest on but an actor guest is joining us, not of the movie, but someone else. I won’t tell you who yet. And also he hasn’t penciled in the date yet, so I shall wait. Being very excited.

Sam (49:54):
It’s fiction. Ha ha ha ha.

Maartje (50:16):
Anyway, am I reading now, I’m just I’m still reading The Book Thief and my other books that I’ve read. Anyway, I guess I’ll call it. Thank you again for listening to another episode of Rosie the Reviewer. You can follow us wherever you get our podcast and rate us five stars. Send this episode to a friend, or you can follow us on Instagram at Rosie the Reviewer Podcast. And if you want, you can rate this movie along with us on our website, rosiethereviewer.com. So please do, I built a little widget for it. So please indulge my nerdy brain. And we’ll see you next week. Bye.

Sam (50:52):
Bye.