“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.