Brian Percival discusses casting Liesel and working with Hollywood’s Iconic composer John Williams
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.
Following on from our discussion of when a film meets history, director Brian Percival spoke with us about working with John Williams and Emily Watson, the arduous road of casting Liesel, and the films power to inspire and educate a new generation and offer an emotionally rewarding experience.
What was it like working with the legendary composer John Williams?
It’s exactly that. I never expected to meet him. I used to sit in the cinema in the seventies and eighties and watch Steven Spielberg films, and all of these great Hollywood blockbusters. Then I hear that he might be interested in The Book Thief, and so we met and I was completely in awe of the man. But I was a little bit worried that he might create a score that was too big for what is a little tale about a humble town in rural Germany. I wondered that if John got all his toys out if it might swamp the film. We chatted for a couple of hours and it just became apparent that we shared the same vision for the film, and indeed that’s what attracted him.
He hasn’t worked with anyone other than Steven Spielberg for the last eight or nine years and there was something about this film and the subject matter that touched him. He wanted to make something that was contained, beautiful, emotional and in contrast to his big scores with percussion ad trumpets. So it was something that was new and fresh to him, and an opportunity that he welcomed. He was an incredible man to work with – so clever.
I found out that he worked with Hitchcock on his last film, and so you are sort of sitting there with a piece of history; a legend. He was a wonderful, gentle and kind man who’s so creative and incredibly humble about what he does, which is a real joy.
The Book Thief also afforded you an opportunity to work with Emily Watson, whose performance in Breaking the Waves inspired you to want to become a director. The opportunity to direct Emily must have been an interesting experience for you both personally and professionally.
Without a doubt and that was weird as well. I was making commercials at the time and I was enjoying it even though I was thinking about wanting to do something else. I’d been to Copenhagen a few times and I was quite interested in Dogma and the pictures that were coming out. Although it didn’t entirely work, it did change the landscape of cinema convincingly for a while. The rules that they set up were eventually not practical enough to adopt completely, but certainly presented a new style.
Breaking the Waves was just so refreshing – I’d never seen anything like it up until that point, and of course that was Emily’s first film. I just couldn’t believe it, and that’s what made my mind up that there’s a style of cinema out there that I connected with in some way. So that inspired me to go on and do other things and it probably inspired the first short film of mine that my wife wrote, About a Girl. It did quite well and received a BAFTA, but that approach inspired me to go down that route, and then from About a Girl we have sort of moved on.
The role of Liesel is a challenging part for any young actress who is required to age convincingly. How did you go about finding Sophie Nélisse and is it true you ruined her dream of competing in the Rio Olympics?
She ruined her own dream [laughs]. Believe me when she makes her mind to something she does it.
It is such a difficult role to play, and not just because of the physical nature of ageing from ten to sixteen, which precludes a sixteen year old who can’t play a ten year old and vice versa. So you have to have someone in the middle. Liesel is such a unique character and she has such strength of conviction of spirit that if she’s not played right, even though she is surrounded by the best actors in the world, the film lives or dies by her performance. If you don’t believe Liesel, then you don’t believe in the film.
On the one hand she has this strength, this will, but on the other hand she really has to be quite naïve and vulnerable especially at the end of the film. It is a tall order to find someone who can play those six years in which we probably change the most. From ten and eleven up until sixteen or seventeen we physically grow, look older and the body changes, so she had to portray all of that.
She was training about thirty-five hours a week to be in the Rio Olympics. We had casting directors all over the world in Europe, America, Australia auditioning kids, and Markus Zusak said “Have you seen this film Monsieur Lazhar?” I took a look at the film and there was something about Sophie. Something stood out even though she wasn’t the lead in the film. She was ten years old and French-Canadian, but would she be able to play a kid in Nazi Germany? We sent her a few scenes and there was something about her, a presence or just something that made her stand out from all the others. There were kids there who had had stage careers and were accomplished actors, but I never wanted anyone to come along and act Liesel. I wanted someone to be Liesel and that’s why it took so long to find her.
My reasoning has always been and particularly with a teenager or a young actor who will not have the life experience and the physical years to adopt the technique; who haven’t had time to learn because they are twelve or thirteen years old, that the better approach is always to find someone who is as close to that character as possible. There was something about Sophie that shone; a spirit or an edge. At the same time she was quite young and naïve, but there was also a strong character there. She did these two or three scenes though she didn’t know what the film was about. There was still something there and so then we auditioned her in America.
She was jet lagged, she had huge rings under her eyes and she was shattered, but there was something there that was interesting, and we thought she had the potential to carry the film. Then we screen tested her and about four or five other kids in Berlin and that was it. We just knew she was the one, and with the right voice coaching, hair and make-up she would be fine.
Her approach to gymnastics training, that dedication and focus, she just turned that into becoming an actor; into becoming Liesel. She’s like one of those kids – I wish I was like that when I was thirteen – who are so focused, probably because of the sports training, and because second best isn’t good enough. You’ve got to prove you can do this and do it better than anyone else. That’s something she carries around. She’s never precocious; she’s a great kid; grounded and down to earth and she shuns a lot of the fame thing. She’s not like so many kids today who are inspired by celebrities. Sophie’s not like that. She just wants to be the best at whatever she does, and I think that comes out.
Do you hope the film inspires audiences to pick up books as opposed to their iPhones or iPads?
If it means reading a book on a Kindle or an ipad, then fine. Of course it’s not as romantic as picking up a book, but words are really a metaphor for education, where you absorb the influence of others, the ideas and thoughts of other people that allow you to see the world in a different way. So it’s opening oneself up to education in a sense. Whether it’s a book on an ipad or a paperback book or a reference book in a library, it’s about inspiring a generation to question the things that they learn about. It’s about inspiring them to think for themselves and to take control of their own lives, which is a key point of the film.
With the success of Downton Abbey here in the UK and HBO in America, has a space been created between film and television? At one time movies were the dominant force, but in the past decade the divide seems to have been shrunk by innovative and critically acclaimed television from both sides of the Atlantic.
The landscapes definitely changed. You’ve got fabulous directors like Fincher and Scorsese doing pieces for television, and things have shifted. When you look at the viewing figures some miniseries’ get, it becomes more about content.
I think you have to be aware of the intentions of the medium you are directing for because I would shoot something differently for cinema than I would for television. Television tends to be more explicit in the way it tells a story, in as much as we are invited – the director and editor choose the series of close-ups to tell the story, whereas on a big screen we can hold it on a two shot and the audience can decide who to look at. This gives more power to the audience and it’s rewarding because it allows them to make their own decisions.
Certainly the landscape has changed and it’s become more about content, but also through the devices on which we are using to watch entertainment. Whilst people are watching stuff on ipads, and phones, it remains about the stories and the characters.
So things have changed and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. There are some things that I would always love to go and see on a big screen, and then there are those other things that maybe you do want to watch it on a train, on a plane or on an iPad.
Whilst you’ve got every confidence in the movie do you get nervous before a screening of your film or are you generally confident?
I think it’s very foolish to be over confident about anything one does because you can never judge how it will be received. I’m probably more nervous around those people I care about and their response. But I didn’t try and make the film for the critical elite. I tried to make a film that would be seen by a wide audience, and I unashamedly admit that. Part of that is because when we were trying to find Sophie and the other kids I couldn’t believe how many kids knew nothing about the holocaust. It really surprised me and particularly kids in America who just had no idea.
So I thought there was an opportunity here where I could harden the film up in the sense that it could be more violent, and more explicit in areas, but what would that achieve? It would be by degrees and it may well preclude a younger audience. The age that we are living in today everybody has smart phones or ipads and they’ll find out for themselves what this was about.
We showed it to the ten year old daughter of an executive and at the end of the film she turned round and with tears rolling down her cheeks asked, “Mummy why was everybody so horrible to the Jewish people?” She had no idea and when Sophie’s friends saw the film they were asking “What is that about then?”
They’d go away and they’d google it, but if I had have made a film that was hardened up, supposedly a holocaust movie if there is such a genre, then why would I make it, because it’s not The Book Thief and it’s been done so many times before. Also people who go and see holocaust films know about the holocaust and so it’s not going to attract a different audience.
The Book Thief is a life affirming story about the human spirit, the power of words and how you can take control of your life and see the world in a different way. It’s all of those things, and as a result a generation are seeing something for the first time they knew nothing about. So I feel in some ways that that has vindicated the choice I made, which was not to try and copy those great films that have gone before like Schinder’s List, The Pianist and countless others. I see little point and that’s not really what the book is about.
Of course one as sleepless nights of how it will be received, but it is a slow process in which more and more people gradually get to see the film. By the time it comes out although you can never be sure, you’ve got a sense of whether it’s going to be okay or it’s going to be a complete disaster.
We previewed the film in upstate California one Sunday afternoon, and not knowing how an audience would react, it got what I think was a ninety-two per cent approval rating. At that point FOX said “Lock the picture and John [Williams] will do the score.”
From doing so many screenings and question and answer sessions in America and parts of Europe is that people have generally and genuinely been moved by the film, and have taken something away from the experience. So I am pleased with the way it has turned out.
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