Please note this post contains spoilers for the film and the book The Book Thief
I watched The Book Thief with my boyfriend this weekend. It was good to watch with someone who hadn’t read the book because where I thought everything was quite clear, even with what had been left out he thought otherwise on that (although him not know who Jesse Owens was didn’t help either).
Generally the film was fairly faithful to the book. There were a few bits cut, mainly things with Rudy and things with the Hitler Youth, but it is a big book and I think most of the cuts made sense. The only thing really which bugged me was that Rudy was recruited for the elite group of children, but at the time his father had already gone to war. In the book the father is conscripted as a punishment for refusing to send Rudy to this camp. As it was though Rudy was recruited but didn’t go making it seem strange that it was in there at all.
Because so much of Rudy was cut it was less upsetting when he died, it was still sad, but not as sad as Liesel’s ‘parents’. There was less of her Papa too, but the still made him loveble, and his death was probably the saddest.
Buy it:
DVD (£9.99)
Blu-ray (£14.99)
