The Reader
The Reader
The Reader, set in post-WWII Germany, follows teenager Michael Berg as he engages in a passionate but secretive affair with an older woman named Hanna. Eight years after Hanna s disappearance, Michael is stunned to discover her again as she stands on trial for Nazi war crimes. The Reader is a haunting story about truth and reconciliation and how one generation comes to terms with the crimes of another. Kate Winslet won and Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her performance.What is the nature of guilt–and how can the human spirit survive when confronted with deep and horrifying truths? The Reader, a hushed and haunting meditation on these knotty questions, is sorrowful and shocking, yet leavened by a deep love story that is its heart. In
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A profoundly moving and intellectual masterpiece…,
I am writing this review on Oscar Nomination morning (although due to the fact that I refuse to post a review until the DVD has dropped you will be reading this much later) mostly due to my elation that it has been nominated for not only the marvelous performance by Kate Winslet (in the right category mind you) but also for Best Picture, Best Director and Adapted Screenplay. I’ve been chomping at the bit to write this review ever since I walked out of the theater a few weeks back, and since then I’ve seen the film a record three times and I would watch it again right now if I could. I’ve pondered this film, discussed this film, relived this film and can honestly label it the best film of the year and quite possibly one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time.
Sure, you can be quick to pinpoint it’s supposed faults, and you can try and label it something that it is not, but if you allow your eyes to open and your mind to absorb you may be able to see this for what it really is; a masterpiece.
When sitting down to write this review I asked my friend how I was going to be able to do so without being redundant or irritating. I mean, how many different ways can you say masterpiece before someone says “I get the point, now move on”? I’m going to try and get all that out of the way right now so that my review will be palatable.
`The Reader’ is a masterpiece.
Okay, I’m done now.
Having read Bernhard Schlink’s beautiful novel I was really anticipating this film. I feel that Kate Winslet is the finest working actress today and this just seemed like such an ideal role for her (Oscar, if you pass her over this year I vow to never watch another telecast). I of course try and shrug off all `high expectations’, and thankfully with `The Reader’ there was no hype. It hasn’t been hailed as the best of anything, and while it has landed on a few top ten lists it rarely breaks close to the top. The reviews have been mixed, some raving it as a masterpiece, some labeling it a faux; an imitation of a more insightful film. The only awards the film has garnered up until the point have been for Winslet so walking into the film, I was not feeding into hype.
I was simply hoping to see a good movie.
The film tells the story of Michael Berg, a young fifteen year old boy living in Post-WWII Germany. One day while making his way home he falls ill and is helped back by an older woman named Hanna. After waiting out his illness he attempts to thank Hanna but he winds up falling into a steamy affair. The two bond over books, using reading as a form of foreplay, and the two become almost inseparable. Then for no apparent reason Hanna leaves town without a word and Michael is left wondering why his only love has left him. Years later while Michael is attending law school he gets the opportunity to sit in on a trial being held over war crimes and is stunned, and ultimately heartbroken, to see Hanna is one of the accused.
First and foremost it should be addressed that this is not your typical Holocaust film, for quite frankly the Holocaust is the least impressionable part of this film. The film, like the novel, deals strongly with the feelings of guilt and redemption. There is a moral play that runs throughout each scene that begs the audience to cast judgment, but not in an absolute way but in a more complex and understanding way. `The Reader’ has no easy answers, but it throws at the audience a bit of a conundrum. It reminds me very much of `Dead Man Walking’, a film that appears to have such an easy answer yet causes you to rip apart your own ideals.
I am keeping SPOILERS to a minimum here, but be forewarned that there may be a few.
When we meet Michael and Hanna they seem like an odd match. He is obviously better off financially than she is. He is attending school and is doing rather well. Hanna is working a dead end job and living in a small apartment. Her education is limited but her yearning for more is apparent. There is an attraction physically, which cannot be denied. While Hanna is rough due to the nature of her life she is a diamond in the rough, a beautiful woman trapped within the shell of her former life. Michael is young and coming into his own; a handsome boy with a head on his shoulders.
There’s innocence within him that Hanna desires.
Their relationship is very fast and very graphic, but there is a sincerity there that one needs to truly look for. Some have complained that the relationship was pure surface; nothing but lust. They are missing something crucial. `The Reader’ is a film filled with quiet moments that speak volumes about the characters. There is a deeper connection between these two souls, one that maybe they can’t even recognize. There is a moment where Hanna finds herself inside a small church listening to a young choir…
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|Exquisitely done, deep and emotionally draining,
[Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.]
BEWARE OF SPOILERS.
There is a certain segment of the German mentality that is Hanna Schmidt. English Kate Winslet captures the intent of novelist Bernhard Schlink in her interpretation of the character. Hanna was an ordinary but proud woman of discipline who always did her duty, a woman without the ability to separate herself from what she knew was right and what was wrong, but a woman who was able to hide from herself what she did that was wrong.
She seduces fifteen-year-old Michael Berg. She finds him doubly useful as a reader of great literature. She knows it will not work. Of course how could it? She indulges herself but, being strong and proud, is able to divorce herself from him emotionally when the time comes, as it must. When he reads D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover to her, she is genuinely offended at the open sexuality, but we viewers are taken back since what she is doing with 15-year-old Michael Berg is on the screen and naked before our eyes.
In a sense this is the somewhat familiar story of the young man of station and potential had briefly in his youth by the older woman who has neither station nor potential. They take advantage of one another for the time being, both knowing that they will move on. But young Michael is not fully aware of this old story because his station in life is, although above hers, still rather modest, and being fifteen and knowing a woman for the first time, he is in love as much as–or even more than–a fifteen-year-old can be.
She is short with him and selfish because she knows she will be tossed aside and so instinctively knows she needs to get something now. She calls him “kid” and consumes him, as would be the case in such a relationship. Yet there is his “reading.” He has a talent for it and he enjoys reading to her. At one point she instructs him, reading first and then making love.
What is love? Hanna Schmidt does not know. And so her character is triply flawed. She has low self-esteem, hiding her illiteracy from all. She is removed from her feelings because of the past. That is how she has coped. What she has done she knows on one level was something horrendous; but on another level she only took the job at Siemens. What else was she to do? She was a guard. She had to guard the prisoners, otherwise there would be chaos. This is her defense. This is her belief. And finally, she cares for young Michael as she cares for herself, as one might care for valuable livestock, but she neither loves him nor herself. For again “What is love,” as Tina Turner once had it, “but a second-hand emotion”?
At the end we see her, an old woman in prison being visited by the adult Michael Berg. She has put out her hand to him, and he, being human, has touched it. But he has withdrawn his hand. And now they stand and she leans, ever so slightly toward him to be hugged perhaps, to be touched for perhaps the first time in decades. But he does not respond. He cannot.
This echoes back to an earlier scene when he, as a young law student suddenly finds himself observing her trial. He realizes that she is taking the blame for the deaths of the Jewish “prisoners” because she would rather do that then reveal that she cannot read or write. It is interesting that young Berg realizes the truth of why she liked to be read to only then. And so he thinks to save her by letting the court know that she could not have written the order that condemned the prisoners to death. And so he makes an appointment to go to the prison and see her. But as she waits for her unknown visitor to arrive, he suddenly turns away. What he realizes, one speculates, is that there is nothing he can say to her or to the court that will change anything. Whether she wrote the actual order or not really doesn’t matter. The others get off with lighter sentences, but all of them are equally guilty of whatever it was that was that allowed the German psyche to allow the holocaust. And too Berg is not clear about how he feels. Here is a woman he once loved who now is revealed as a monster. Yes, she is a monster, but strange to say almost an innocent monster.
It is curious that Berg so deeply loved her that he acquires her trait of emotional distance. He learns he can only sleep alone. His marriage fails. He is not as close to his daughter as he would like. And finally he is not able to help Hanna when she is alone in prison. He cannot bring himself to respond to her letters. And yet he reads to her. Hour after hour after hour he reads the classics into a microphone and sends the tapes to her to listen to in prison.
I wonder how this was received in Germany. There is such a guilt that hangs over…
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|Literal and Metaphorical Exploration of Questions of Blame and Shame in Germany.,
“The Reader” is an English-language film based on a German-language book, “Der Vorleser” by Bernhard Schlink, a novel in which the author explores questions of guilt and responsibility for the Holocaust in his parents’ generation. He does so through the experiences of Michael Berg (David Kross), who, as a teenager in 1958, had an affair with a woman 20 years his senior, Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet). Years later, when he is at law school, Michael finds that Hanna is a defendant in a war crimes case. She is charged with the murders of hundreds of prisoners who died in a burning building when she was a guard at a concentration camp. Decades later, when Michael (Ralphes Fiennes) is middle-aged, he still has trouble assessing how much guilt to assign Hanna and by this time is carrying around some guilt of his own.
It’s probably impossible to write any opinion or lack of opinion about the events of World War II in Germany without stirring controversy. But, in the rest of the world, people interpret these stories as morality plays that can be applied to a broader context. “The Reader” was a bestseller in the United States. The movie has a great cast and an interesting story, but it may owe its critical success to the fact that it lends itself to being interpreted differently by different people. The question of whether people should be condemned for doing what most people would do under the circumstances, that was acceptable behavior at the time, remains a sticky issue in Germany. “The Reader” views the trial of a group of SS guards whose commitment to duty resulted in hundreds of deaths through the eyes of the younger generation, which is deeply ashamed of the nation’s past.
The DVD (Weinstein 2009): There are 5 featurettes, 11 deleted and extended scenes, and a theatrical trailer. “Adapting a Timeless Masterpiece” (25 min) interviews director Stephen Daldry, screenwriter David Hare, and author Bernhard Schlink about the adaptation, themes, and the cast about the director’s style. “A Conversation with David Kross & Stephen Daldry” (10 min) includes a few press interviews with the actor and director. “Kate Winslet on the Art of Aging Hanna Schmitz” (13 min) spends time in the make-up chair with Winslet and the make-up team as they age her 30 years. The composer talks about what the music needs to accomplish in “A New Voice: A Look at Composer Nico Muhly” (4 min). “Coming to Grips with the Past” (7 min) interviews production designer Brigitte Broch about locations, period design, and her own choice to leave Germany 40 years ago. Subtitles are available for the film in English SDH and Spanish. Dubbing available in French.
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