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 postwar Germany, young schoolboy Michael (German actor David Cross) meets and begins a tender romance with the older, mysterious Hanna (Kate Winslet, whose performance is a revelation). The two make love hungrily in Hanna’s shabby apartment, yet their true intimacy comes as Michael reads aloud to Hanna in bed, from his school assignments, textbooks, even comic books. Hanna delights in the readings, and Michael delights in Hanna.
Years later, the two cross paths again, and Michael (played as an adult by Ralph Fiennes) learns, slowly, horrifyingly, of acts that Hanna may have been involved in during the war. There is a war crimes trial, and the accused at one point asks the panel of prosecutors: “Well, what would you have done?” It is that question–as one German professor says later: “How can the next generation of Germans come to terms with the Holocaust?”–that is both heartbreaking and unanswerable. Winslet plays every shade of gray in her portrayal of Hanna, and Fiennes is riveting as the man who must rewrite history–his own and his country’s–as he learns daily, hourly, of deeds that defy categorization, and morality. “No matter how much washing and scrubbing,” one character says matter of factly, “some sins don’t wash away.” The Reader (with nods to similar films like Sophie’s Choice and The English Patient dares to present that unnerving premise, without offering an easy solution. –A.T. Hurley
Stills from The Reader (Click for larger image)
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April 21, 2008
#1
Please refer to Hanna Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem from whence the above phrase is coined.
Was the woman in this movie a monster, a clown, or just a tiny cog in the wheel of slaughter who refused to open the door to a burning church because it was her job to oversee the jews who were burning inside and if they got out she wouldn’t be able to round them up? Her defense (just as Eichmann’s in his trial) was that she was just doing her job. Thus the banality of evil because in the end evil on such a scale can only be accomplished by thousands of people who are only doing what they’re told. And we feel for this woman a bit because she likes to be read to from Homer which makes her all too human. She’s sort of like us in a lot of ways. But then there’s one thing at the end that’s hard to wrap your mind around; she tells him (her former lover) she never thought about the night of the burning church until her trial 20 years later because she never had to. Think about it.
April 21, 2008
#2
Any human has feelings, soul and only one life to live, and as such, any person can find empathy and sympathy. But this is exactly what Nazis ignored, ignored the value of millions of lives. How can I, just for a minute allow myself to feel empathy for one of them? That would be treason.
April 21, 2008
#3
A well-acted sympathetic portrait of a Nazi concentration camp guard. The idea seems to have been to reveal the banality of evil, the small things that can lead an ordinary person to do horrific things. Certainly a phenomenon worth exploring, but not one to be forgiven, as, in the end, this movie does.
April 21, 2008
#4
An engrossing experience until about the last third – then the slow moving film slows to a crawl with tedious, unnecessary “back story” business and too much concentration on characters added to ensure gender equity.
So the doomed, distasteful affair between an underage boy and a hardened woman “with a Past” (that’s for sure) comes to its’ harrowing conclusion…and they both move on. She moves up the ranks in her Civil service job and he graduates Law School. While there, he attends a real trial involving former Nazi Concentration Camp guards…wait a minute, it can’t be? Hanna?
He is horrified but becomes obsessed with the case. His not unpleasant memories of his youthful indiscretion combine with his intellectual bent and he agonizes…recalls how he played “reader” for her during their interludes. This begins many years of secret communiques involving the original material.
Of course, she’s not innocent. But maybe…she’s not *as guilty* as the others because..she was actually…illiterate. The audience is supposed to decide if “orders” have to be written to be understood. Yeah, she signed away her life and the lives of others. I guess when she selected victims for slaughter she assumed they were not headed for such a situation.
Voyeuristic direction of the “Michael” character (at age 15) makes one wonder about the true message of this movie. (Win at Cannes!?)
April 21, 2008
#5
This movie is Oscar material, it has the right ingredients:
Holocaust tinged story line? Check.
Actors making dramatic, serious speeches. Yep.
A “tragic death” (other than the general Nazi genocide) near or at the end? Check again.
“Adult” themes (on-screen banging)? Check.
The crew that put this film together really know how to fish for that Oscar.
Yes, you are being manipulated by this movie like a an Italian chef manipulates pizza dough. But sit back and enjoy the experience, if you must.