Death is everywhere in this film. He is the dark silhouette passing the Hubermanns’ house at night, the fear whenever someone knocks on the door – he even creeps into the beloved library of Liesel (Sophie Nélisse). And yet joy and life are equally pervasive. It is the sound of children’s laughter which rings on after the film is over, not the blare of the air raid siren. The Book Thief dramatises not life on the battlefields, but the continuing, ordinary lives of people whose home is Nazi Germany during World War Two. While loss is everywhere, life and hope are the overall message, as the small, everyday acts of love – from describing the way the sun looks to someone who can’t go outside, to building a snowman in the basement at Christmas – are brought to the forefront.

To make a heart-warming film out of Marcus Zusak’s novel is perhaps not a difficult task, but Brian Percival brings the story to life in a special way through his striking cinematography. A train rushes through a snowy valley, words are written in chalk on a blackboard, a dark grave is the open hole in a field of snow, in a sequence of black and white images which stamp themselves on the memory. But it is light and colour which visually manifest the film’s atmosphere of warmth and life, whether it’s green leaves in the woods where Liesel and Rudy (Nico Liersch) wander, or the flickering of an ever-glowing candle in the basement where Max hides.

Percival’s cinematography is supported by an excellent musical score from John Williams – indeed, the film is almost worth seeing for this alone. If that isn’t enough, the cast give impeccable performances: Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson are perfect as Liesel’s foster parents. While we warm to Rush’s Hans – ‘a man with an accordion heart’ – at first sight, Watson’s faultless conveyance of external hardness and interior warmth make us all the more fond of her as she develops a love for her foster-daughter.

I’m not going to say this film shows us the horrors of war: it doesn’t. What it does show us may be more personally moving though, as we see people much like ourselves living ordinary lives in the shadow of a terrible event. This film will not only make you think about the way you might carry on with life during war; it will also make you think about the people living on in hope and love while terrible things happen in the world around them right now. The Book Thief is not about death or war so much as it is about humanity. Death himself claims to be haunted by humanity: if you watch this poignant yet hopeful exploration of life and war, you will be too.