“The Reader” has won countless awards for actress Kate Winslet, among them the Oscar and the Golden Globe. Thank god it did not take home statues for any other category. But the fact that it was nominated for such categories as “Best Motion Picture,” “Best Adapted Screenplay” and “Best Director” makes me ask myself what I missed that all the other critics saw.
The story opens in Germany, 1995, in the apartment of Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes), a successful, single middle-aged lawyer. Berg is painfully solemn and hidden, and all the reasons for this are to be revealed by the long flashbacks that make up the majority of “The Reader.”
The first flashback begins in Germany, 1958. Michael is a young 15-year-old boy (David Kross) who crosses paths with the much older Hanna Schmitz (Winslet), who cares for him when he is sick during a rainy day. Long story short, they end up naked. Michael falls in love with Hanna, but she is not satisfied with the sex. Hanna’s happiness comes from Michael reading literature to her.
The story skips to the 1960s where Michael is now attending law school. I wish the whole film were devoted to this time period which examines the interesting way that German society dealt with their Nazi past. One of Michael’s professors (Bruno Ganz) takes him to watch the trial of five women accused of Nazi war crimes, one of whom is Hanna.
During the course of the trial, Michael realizes that he has information that can lessen her sentencing. Because he has such fond memories of her, Michael has to decide whether or not to interfere.
It should be interesting, but everything about this movie is very unnecessary and unworthy of the screen. In part, I think this is because all of the characters remain closed-off to the world. They hide their emotions so well that it would take a very perceptive and sympathetic psychologist to delve into the real issues that each faces. Director Stephen Daldry does a nice job with the cinematography and gets perfect performances from his actors, but he cannot make the story nearly as compelling as it should be. He devotes hours to little subtleties that never seem to manifest into anything concrete or detailed enough to understand. He makes the realization of Hanna’s illiteracy a monumental and corny montage in the middle of the movie, when this was obvious from the first frame of Michael and Hanna’s relationship.
The only saving grace of “The Reader” is Kate Winslet. She does a phenomenal job depicting a rigid, straightforward German woman who hides her shame. Every character Winslet touches turns to gold because she realistically brings drastically different personalities to life every time she’s on screen. I have trouble comprehending how she can play a young, thin, flakey hipster girl in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” the same exact year that she plays an aging, well-rounded, maternal woman in “Finding Neverland.” This year, she plays a young American housewife in the 1950s in “Revolutionary Road,” while she remains a cold and stern older female Nazi in this movie.
If you go see this movie, see it for Winslet’s outstanding and Oscar-winning performance.
She has an acute perception of this character and truly inhabits an unreachable mind of a person who contributed to one of the worst crimes against humanity.
But the rest of film never deals with anything of substance. The character’s battles are within themselves and the director never lets the audience see inside them.
Even when the film addresses the issue of a country dealing with the guilt of its past, the story stays closed-off and personal to the characters alone.
I’ve heard that the novel by Bernhard Schlink is supposedly more meaningful and thought provoking than the movie. But if you end up seeing the film and like it a lot, please tell me what I missed.
Imran • May 13, 2010 at 11:53 pm
A beautiful movie will leave a memory of hundred years
Josep • Mar 21, 2009 at 6:02 pm
After been readed this book I’m traing now to compare it with the screenplay.
Generaly a confrontation in that way leads the people to their own style and manner of lenguages preference: it’s not same movies than literature. Some strong readers dont like to see movies about books that they have liked. A screenwriter dealing to be faithful with a story already written need merge sometimes inconsistent lenguages.
The question translating The Reader by Bernhard Schlink to movie it’s not a disadvantage of duration, does not need more time to expose all the history: The problem stems from the own narration, what is happening within the soul of narrator (Michael Berg’s character) struggling against himself and against an anesthetized German society by the nazi inheritance.
“The decision to write the story of Hanna and mine, I took it after her death. Since then our history has been written many times in my head, always a little different, always with new images and new cuttings of arguments and ideas. So that, beside the version that I have written, there are many other. The guarantee that it’s the certain, it’s that I have written this and not the other ones. This version wanted to be written; all the other ones did not want it.” Says Michael Berg in the last page of the book.
I feel that playwright David Hare and Stephen Daldry director have known successfully write that “other one” history in their play.
Josep • Mar 21, 2009 at 3:27 am
It causes me surprise my perception so much oposit at your own perception when we supose to have seen the same film…
(Please forgive me because of that bad enghish, because my first lenguage is catalan and i’m not expert in your lenguage)
…I’m just now reading the book “The reader” of Bernhard Schlink yet. And Yesterday I went to see the film.
Despite of the excellent argumental plot that analyzes the guilt (blame) of the german society who have had to live together with the nazi inheritance, what especially caught my interest in that film was relationship father-daughter that we only can seelike in small brushstroke flights, which comes in this film version of the story all what for me is the most important: the prevalency of the feelings.
It is clear to me that Hanna is a secondary character. Their emotional coolness of ex-Nazi just comes off unhinged, anly transcends and can be atoned in the scene inside the church, in a certain instant of the trial when she assumes the fault, clearly in the act of the suicidi only showed to us by the feet above the heap of books.
In the other way the life of the main character passes from the adolescence to an advanced adult life. Of this man who he have attained after the years the success in professional life, what interested to me whas his existential suffering in research of the moral coherence of his life forever convicted by the love relationship that he experimented accidentally when he was fifteen years ald, which condemned him to a life of sentimental loneliness, perfectly spelled and paten when he only felt courage contact with Hanna (the person who ruined his loving life) through the recording tapes with the readings.
The question of his life failure finally remains in suspense when he starts to confidant to his daughter happens. Who knows? perhaps if she (who represents the future in the young person) will be able to free him from the weight of the dilema and solitude that the nazism condemned him and his generation?
Obviously as yoy say all is much more clear in the book by Bernhard Schlink
Corey • Sep 7, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Hey Josep! Your points are very well taken if I understood them correctly. it is indeed a very complex movie that examines things on many levels. my only criticism was that the movie didn’t do a good job of portraying all of these things effectively enough for an audience to get there.
hope you enjoyed the book though!