Essay On The Book Thief Book Vs Movie

The book The Book Thief as well as the film adaptation are both extremely well written works. The author of the book, Markus Zusak is capable of describing extremely traumatic events in emotional detail while the director of the movie, Brian Percival is able to put the events of the book into an even more heartfelt work through cinematography. Arguably, the film does much justice to the book.

While many books are known for being a better creation than their movie adaptation, the film version of The Book Thief was exquisitely directed and produced and does justice to the book in my personal opinion. Beginning with the characters, the movie was able to take the deeply filled and complexly written version of the characters from the book and able

However each of the decisions made were well thought out and appeared to have a purpose rather than existing only for a slight change between each work. Personally, I believe the most important or impactful change was the scene in the film where Rudy decided to run away. This scene was a beautifully captured segment in the piece. However when this scene was portrayed in the book, it had more of a panic visual for the reader. In the book, the author describes this scene with the words, “Eleven-year-old paranoia was powerful. Eleven-year-old relief was euphoric.” (Zusak, 132.) This indicates that both Rudy and Liesel were experiencing a state of panic and paranoia yet the second part of the quote, feeling extreme relief, is more dominantly portrayed in the film. Moments such as this event were close and heartfelt, causing the viewer to feel a sense of bonding or strengthening in Rudy and Liesel’s relationship. Arguably, the relationship between them is illustrated as well as in the

Zusak uses the common literary element of narration, however he characterizes the narrator in a way that can only be felt by reading this story, not by watching a film adaptation. This causes controversy on if the movie was able to portray the emotions felt in the book described by words. Arguably, the opinion of the movie being incomparable to the film has a strong foundation. Zusak writes, “***A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR*** I am haunted by humans.” (Zusak, 550.) This illustrates a feeling that only readers can obtain, with the narrator having an unique feel of not being a human or alive, rather being death. Without words, this is incredibly hard to capture in terms of cinematography. While the film adapts the narrator, the voice is not as present and unable to tell the story like how it was told in the book. So, this does leave room for the argument or opinion that the book was far better written than its movie adaptation. However I do not believe this is the