The power of words to connect...or to rip apart

The Book Thief is a beautiful film about the power of words to lift and undermine humanity.

Liesel is sent to live with an old German couple when her mother is sent away as a communist at the beginning of the Second World War. She cannot read or write, so her new Papa patiently teaches her to read and through this experience she grows to love him.

Liesel reads to Max, a Jewish man hidden by the family. He gives her a present, a diary, and tells her, "In my religion we're taught that every living thing, every leaf, every bird is only alive because it contains the secret word for life. That's the only difference between us and a lump of clay. A word. Words are life."

She has to steal the books from the Burgermeister’s house where the library was still intact, unlike in the rest of the town - at the beginning of the war Liesel watched as a huge pile of books is burnt in the town square at an anti-intellectual Nazi ceremony.

Her loyal friend, Rudi dies in her arms after a bomb explosion, never having told her he loves her. She kisses him when he is dead, when it was too late. The power of words: written, spoken, unspoken.