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Filmmaker Brian Percival and actress Emily Watson: When Film Meets History


The Book Thief
26 February 2014

Based on the beloved international bestselling book, The Book Thief tells the story of Liesel, an extraordinary and courageous young girl sent to live with a foster family in World War II Germany.  She learns to read with encouragement from her new family and Max, a Jewish refugee who they are hiding under the stairs.  For Liesel and Max, the power of words and imagination become the only escape from the tumultuous events happening around them.  The Book Thief is a life-affirming story of survival and of the resilience of the human spirit.

The decision to shoot The Book Thief in Berlin the subject matter of the story led filmmaker Brian Percival and actress Emily Watson into an encounter with the atrocities of the past in the light of the present day. Percival and Watson sat down and spoke of when a film meets history.

 

 

Did you feel that it was essential to shoot The Book Thief in Berlin in order to capture a sense of authenticity, and how did it help on a performance level?

Brian Percival: We received location reports from a few places in Europe, from Czechoslovakia and from Hungary, but Germany and Italy were the two that looked the most authentic. When we set out to make the film the plan was to make it feel real by using an existing town. But despite spending around two weeks in July the year before last going from the south to the north of Germany, we just couldn’t find the right town.

There were so many factors which led to that difficulty. One is that Germany is quite a progressive country, and so a lot of building work has been done over the years. If we happened to find towns that we thought were okay then there would be too much to change. The second thing is that ultimately we’ve got to destroy this town, and it became apparent because a lot of Germany was destroyed itself, that there wasn’t an awful lot left behind to film. We did shoot some scenes on location but it seemed the smartest way forward was to build it so that we would have complete control. Also because I was going to use that Himmelstrasse so often, I wanted to build in specific viewpoints that allowed me to vary the exteriors so that I wouldn’t use identical shots. So we built camera traps everywhere and we designed it so that I could shoot it from a number of different angles.

We were going to shoot the main street in a town called Meissen in Germany, which is famous for its porcelain. We were looking at this location and there was one street that had a lot of empty shops in it. It just felt right because we could dress it the way we wanted to, and at the end of the street there was a town square that was perfect.

We were in Meissen on what was to be one of the final recces when it started to snow heavily. We took shelter in this inn in the town square, and when we walked in all the walls were covered with photographs of Meissen under three feet of snow. It became apparent that if we moved and set up in Meissen, it could very well be because were meant to be filming in the spring or summer that we could be shut down for two or three weeks. So that was another reason why. But the logistics just stacked up and so the best way forward was ultimately to build it and to create our own Hilmelstrasse.

Emily Watson: It was interesting shooting there for a lot of reasons. We shot in Babelsberg studios which has an incredible history. It is one of the oldest film studios and it’s been there for over an hundred years. It was under Nazi and then Stasi control and it suffered a lot of interference, and so there’s an interesting history to the place. To be in Berlin was amazing, particularly with this book, and not just because it is set in the Second World War but because of the nature of the subject matter and the dichotomy of it being one of the most civilised cities on earth with this incredible culture. Berlin has one of the greatest orchestras, great museums and yet their central government committed the worst atrocity mankind has ever committed. So what went wrong?

In a way what wrong were the kinds of decisions people like the Hubermanns made around their kitchen tables and how they were the building blocks of that. A whole nation lost its moral compass because people weren’t as brave as they were. It’s a very honest city, and it’s bearing witness to what happened in a very accurate way. It’s going to punish itself forever and will never ever forget what it did.

We were also surrounded by German cast and crew, and so everybody had stories. I didn’t feel like I could ask, but everybody’s grandparents at least were in some way related to that event, and whether they had been part of it or not you didn’t know.

 

 

How much do grief did you cause yourself by filming The Book Thief in Germany with Nazi Swastika flags hanging from the walls? Was there an interest from people outside of the project who found the sight of the Nazi Swastikas disconcerting?

Brian Percival: What it does and which the producers thankfully backed me on is that it gives the piece an authenticity. In Berlin the history is so tangible – in the sense that it’s constantly all around you. So whenever you are not filming you are in a city that is a constant reminder of what happened. While we were there, there was a huge exhibition about all the people who became dissidents, who were forced out of Germany by Hitler when he came to power. So there’s an atmosphere about the place, and we also had twenty-five German cast members and ninety-five per cent or more of the crew were German. So that all adds to the sound and the feel of the piece, and it makes it more authentic. So it was the right thing to do, and it helped us, but we did have to get dispensation from the authorities for the Swastika, and for the German national anthem because there are two verses which are sung in the film that have been banned. But we were allowed to do that because it was deemed to be educational as there is a strong message about how community can be corrupted into believing something in the film. So all the permissions were granted with the blessings of the German people, and it just added to the authenticity of the film.

Emily Watson: The scene where they shot the book burning was in a small town on the Polish border, and driving that way you were very aware of… God all the things that had happened there! It’s a very beautiful medieval town that’s still intact and seeing all of these Swastikas flags there where they filmed the children’s choir singing, which is actually prohibited material. If you try to look that up on the internet you can’t find it, though somebody might be alerted to your search.

So we had to get special permission to use it in the film, and it’s one of my favourite sequences because you see her for the first time enjoying the experience of being with other children; being part of something, and getting the feel good factor from being in the choir and singing and doing what all the Germans did, which was to be a part of something. It’s passionate and it’s a little bit like a fete, a fair or a bonfire night kind of thing. Then you see her listening to the Bergemeister and you see in a really amazing close-up the moment when the penny drops, and she realises what’s going on.

 

 

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