Semantics of the M. Zusak’s text «The book thief» in visual interpretation of B. Percival

Abstract

The study of the screening result is relevant because it covers the range of interdisciplinary issues – the relationship between cinema and literature. The purpose of the article is to find out what meanings the director B. Percival was trying to convey to a viewer, what visual means were used and how fuly the screen version reflected Zusak's text. The article is devoted to the comparison of Zusak’s novel «The book thief» and its screen version by B. Percival. The chronotope, the plot, the system of the novel’s characters and the screen version were analyzed. As a result, it can be stated that Percival’s film is not only a striking adaptation of Zusak’s novel «The book thief», but also an interesting individual, cultural and historical «perusal» of this work by an English director.

The storyline of M. Zusak's novel «The Book thief» in the screen version is almost unchanged. M. Zusak’s characters are people who differ from the surrounding society. One of the essential features of all the actors of M. Zusak’s «The  Book thief» is the complexity of characters, which differ from the psychologically simpler characters of the same name in B. Percival’s version. The screen version does not mention all the books in the text of the novel. Each title of the book is symbolic. The attraction of the poetics of reflections in the novel is particularly embodied in the coexistence of similar details, objects, and phenomena. In addition to heavens and Heaven (Himmel) Street, you can recall the letters and the words of the cellar wall and the «The Complete Duden Dictionary and Thesaurus».

Also, the attentive attitude of the English director to the disclosure of the essence of the novel’s central characters should be noted. However, in the process of cinematic adaptation, the novel has lost some minor characters. Of course, changes were an inevitable consequence of the transformation of a text into a visual piece.