The Reader

There's an urgency in human nature to understand. When it comes to the Holocaust, history's bleak, unsettling period, it doesn't matter what book you've read, film you've seen or account you've heard; in the end, your response it halted by its incomprehensible conclusion. How could humanity course its way towards such a violent, destructive path? How could people knowingly send men, women, and children to their impending doom? Most puzzling, how could the world allow it? Even though its been 63 years since the blood-drenched annals of World War II, its aftermath today is still bone chilling.

After a six year celluloid dry spell, Stephen Daldry returns to the director's chair in a brilliant, sexually charged, and oddly heartbreaking tale about the complexity of human morality and the lifelong repercussions that result from our actions. Adapted from Bernhard Schlink's best-selling German novel, "The Reader," Daldry's visual translation is a powerful, emotionally absorbing film that is one of the year's best. It's superbly crafted.

With World War II over, Germany, in 1958, is still recovering. Deep within Heidelberg, Germany, Michael (David Kross), a young pubescent teenager haven fallen ill, is comforted by Hanna (Kate Winslet), a hard working woman who is twice his age. Taken by her generosity, Michael revisits Hanna to offer his gratitude. What begins as an awkward reunion escalates into a seductive, forbidden affair that intensifies when Michael begins reading to the distant, empty Hanna, who is deeply awakened by Michael's spoken literature. Too young to understand love's complicated implications, Michael is emotionally devastated when Hanna suddenly disappears. Nearly a decade later, unable to forget his passionate summer while studying law, he attends a Nazi trail, and to his dismay, hears Hanna's distant voice.

"The Reader" is a complex film; maybe a little too complex for some. Though the film pertains to Nazism and the "sins of our fathers," in essence, "The Reader" is a film that reflects the emotions inside all of us. During a lecture, Michael's professor comments, "Societies like to think they operate on morality but they don't." In this cynical age, how far from reality is that statement? During Hanna's trial, she's questioned why she participated in the Nazi party's horrendous war crimes, broken she replies, "It was my job." Oddly enough, that seems to be the justification most people use. Surprisingly, though, "The Reader" isn't about her exposure as a war criminal, but an exposure on an individual who took the wrong path. She's not a bad person; she's simply made wrong choices. However, when it comes to having involvement in the Nazi's liquidation of the Jews, how "wrong" can you get? "You ask us to think like lawyers," cries on student, "what are we trying to do?" A distraught Michael replies, "We are trying to understand!" But, just who exactly is trying to grasp a deeper understanding: the court or Michael? How can Hanna's past be forgiven? Director Stephen Daldry brings the much needed emotional layer that a character such as Hanna Schmitz desperately needs. Although her actions are beyond unforgivable, strangely, we sympathize with her. Maybe it's her other shameful secret. Maybe it's superb character development.

"The Reader" is a film that is driven by it's raw performances. In one of her finest hours, Kate Winslet gives the performance of a lifetime. It's a haunting and heart-breaking. David Kross, who's only 18, is impressive as the teenager with raging hormones; it's such a daring performance. Winselt and Kross bring this picture together. Their performances are jaw-droppingly brilliant. Completing the role of Michael, as the tortured grown man, is Ralph Fiennes, who balances Michael's despair through his melancholic emotion when he encounters a grown Jewish woman, played by Lena Olin, who was also at Hanna's trail. Although her scenes clock in less than 10 minutes, Olin, too, is breathtaking.

When "The Reader's" credits rolled, I sat quietly shaken by what I had witnessed. It's a film that is impossible to forget. When a grown Michael asks Hanna, "Have you spent much time thinking about the past?" Heartbroken, she replies, "It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what I feel. The dead are still dead." She's right.

Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) re-encounters his former lover (Kate Winslet) as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.

The film raises the question of whether we should judge someone by the law or rather "the laws of the time". And there is a big difference. Of course we know that killing is morally wrong, and those who sent people to death in World War II were morally in the wrong, even if they were only following orders.

But were they legally wrong? One could argue not. That is a difficult topic. Like the women of this film, those at the Nuremberg Trial were tried and convicted under laws invented after the war. Laws written by the winners. This makes one wonder: is it right to put someone on trial for something morally wrong, even if it was not legally wrong? And who should decide the laws? Had the Axis won, they could have just as easily declared it illegal to drop atomic bombs on innocent villages and then try, convict and execute Harry Truman.

Right and wrong is no easy topic.

We don't know. We think we do but we don't. We make decisions or sometimes decisions are made for us but we think we've made them. Then suddenly, there we are. We can't be certain how we got there or where we will be when everything settles but we do know that we are alive. Some experiences are life altering and we can run from them or embrace them. Staying to see them through though can bring incredible bliss but also tormented turmoil. We just never know. One such experience was had by a young Michael Berg (David Kross) and is chronicled in Stephen Daldry's THE READER. How could he know that when he pulled into an alley to be sick that he would meet the woman who would shape his entire life? How could he know that getting close to her would pull him the furthest he's ever been from himself?

Of course, when you're a sixteen-year-old boy and a woman who looks like Kate Winslet disrobes in front of you in the privacy of her bathroom, how much thought really goes into the decision that has presented itself? However little it is, it is certainly less than is warranted. This is especially true in West Germany of 1958. This is a Germany that is uncertain how to proceed, how to be its new self in the eyes of the world and the eyes of its very own future generations. Winslet plays Hanna Schmitz, a compassionate woman but also abrasive and stern. Winslet strikes the perfect balance between directness and desire in Schmitz, making her complexities part of her appeal. She is a good fifteen years older than the young Berg and she knows much better than he of her country's history. What he knows, he has read in books, been taught in school. What she knows, she lived first hand. So when the two come together, naked in each other's arms, the meeting is as redemptive as it is passionate. Berg is just happy to be in love and having sex but Schmitz is washing herself clean with the youthful vigor of Germany's tomorrow.

The summer ends and so does the affair, as one would expect. Just when it would seem that the two would never meet again, life steps in to ensure that past decisions, perhaps made in haste, can come to see their consequences. Berg has grown some and is a college man, studying to be a lawyer, when he catches sight of Hanna Schmitz again. Their latest chance encounter is far less exciting though as he sees her on a class outing to a courthouse. Schmitz is on trial for crimes against humanity for her time as an officer in the Nazi party during the Second World War. Berg's memory of his first love would now become a question of his own morality. How could he love someone who was now accused of such atrocities? How could he be so intimate with someone he apparently never truly knew? And yet, now that he knows her past, does he really know how her past came to be? After all, what is the face of evil? Is it Hanna Schmitz or is it something incredibly bigger than her?

Ralph Fiennes is the future of Germany. He plays Berg as an adult. His life is orderly, very clean, crisp and cold. He made decisions that made him the man he is and he can never say whether they were the right ones or not. What he can see is that we all make decisions that either hurt or harm other people and that the atrocities committed by his past generations are not as far outside the realm of understanding as he might have originally thought. More importantly, redemption is not that far either.

Before I start reviewing, let me say something personal: As a German, one can hardly watch movies about the Holocaust, WWII or any related topic unbiased. As I have discovered myself, no German family is without a history related to the Third Reich, almost none are without grave guilt, or at least the fear thereof, and most who say otherwise either lie knowingly, or simply try to evade further inquiry.

Reading some of the other reviews, I realized that for me, the movie conveyed something slightly, but decisively different: It is not so much about understanding HOW people could ever do the things they did, but rather how it is possible, that people we love, and people that have been loved by people we love could be so guilty and so loving, so despicable and lovable at the same time. It is about how we expect the guilt to show up somehow, how we expect to know the killer, the monster, at first sight and say: how could anyone not have seen it? Yet we have to admit sooner or later, that we were wrong, or were we? The question really is: How could I have ever loved someone who did things as horrible and disgusting as Hannah did? And just as much: If I am unmerciful now, having learned of their guilt, is it because they did what they did, or because they disappointed my own belief in their innocence?

At one point, Hanna Schmitz asks the judge: "What would you have done?", and I think that therein lies an even more disturbing and unsettling question: What would I have done? What would you have done? How can anyone know for sure what WE would done? It is too easy to think of oneself as morally sound, with a firm belief in what is right and wrong. It's what Germans call the "mercy of late birth" - the luxury of not having been in the position to make that choice.

So, what made this movie worth giving the full 10 points out of 10? It is well-crafted, well-played, believable, at times even beautiful. It captures both the fascination Michael feels with Hannah, and his disbelief, even disgust while exploring the ugly truth about her past. It conveys the struggle between our compassion and the reluctance to show mercy against the ones who did not. It leaves the viewer with the same, disturbing questions that have not been answered sufficiently in the past 60 years (nor will they ever be). It does not provide simple answers, but rather raises more questions, left to be unanswered. As Lena Olin's Character says: "If you want Catharsis, go to the theater!"

Other than providing beautiful, well-toned cinematography, a well-written script, love of detail and convincing performances even by the supporting cast - what more can you expect from a truly great movie?

Kate Winslet is just outstanding in this very interesting film that is almost two stories-in-one. The first part is a sexual story of an older woman having affairs with a teenage boy and the second part is her war crimes tale and what happens afterward. The first is a somewhat happy jaunt of a short story and the second is a very serious and depressing story. That's where Winslet really shines. Obviously, she's developed into an an outstanding actress.

The second part is what most people, I assume, will remember about this film. Can "Hanna Schmitz," a Nazi employee (so to speak), who was part of concentration camps, be a sympathetic character? To me, that's what it looked like that's the question the story was asking. The answer may have come in the final minutes of the movie when her ex-lover "Michael Berg," now grown up and played by Ralph Fiennes, confronts a survivor of the camp. That, too, was very intense and interesting scene. Lena Olin is riveting as "Rose/Illana Mather."

"The Reader" was full of quiet, but intense scenes. This is a very thought-provoking film, especially for one that doesn't start off that way but look almost like some soft-porn flick to get our attention. It is anything but that.

For Germans, this film must bring out many emotions and thoughts. Guilt and forgiveness are just two of the issues that are dealt with in this unique film. "Hanna Schmitz" turns out to be an incredibly simple-yet-complex person, unlike any I've encountered on film in a long time. You see her in all kinds of light, both good and bad.

Kudos, too, to David Kross' acting as the young Michael Berg. It must be strange for someone his age (barely turned 18) to do the scenes he did with 30-something Winslet.

Overall, a very different and excellent film that stays with you and makes you ponder its main characters.