The Reader

Directed by Stephen Daldry and written by David Hare, "The Reader" is a thought-provoking and surprising drama that takes the viewer in several different directions. Though some reviewers on this site are critical of Daldry and the film, in lesser hands, "The Reader" would be a total, erratic mess.

The story is told in flashback as the adult Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) remembers his youth. As a 15-year-old boy, the young Michael (David Kross) has his first forays into sex with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) in 1958 Berlin. She helps him when he winds up on her doorstep, ill with scarlet fever; he returns to thank her when he's well. The two enter into a sexual relationship. As part of their time together, Hanna has Michael read to her. One day, Hanna simply disappears. The next time Michael sees her is in 1966, when he is a law student in Heidelberg and his class travels to watch a trial. It is then he realizes not one secret that Hanna carried with her, but two.

"The Reader" is, above all, a very human story of real, conflicted human beings, and the brilliant performances reflect this. David Kross is exceptional as the young Michael, in the throes of first, blinding passion, who, in the face of the truth about the woman he loved, endeavors to understand her nonetheless. Kate Winslet is magnificent, and that's the only word for her. Hardened by life and her unsentimental and uncompromising view of the world, she is cut off from people due to a secret she considers shameful. With Michael she allows herself some softness, and gives in to not only passion but emotion, sobbing when Michael reads a sad story to her. Winslet shows us all of this, her need to connect with someone, and her strict view of life. Ralph Fiennes turns in another excellent performance; Michael's world and his own isolation were shaped by Hanna. As an adult, he still grapples with a decision he made and his own guilt; he still tries to understand not only her but how he could love her, and in the midst of all of these complex emotions, he believes he owes her something. He ends up giving her the greatest gift he could - her dignity.

As with "Dead Man Walking," there is more to a person than his or her actions, reprehensible though they may be. We are not, after all, what we do but who we are. While some crimes are unforgivable, there is, shockingly, at times a connection with the perpetrator that allows us to see the person and extend a consideration that person never gave another. Thus murderers have loving parents and family, and someone who showed inhumanity to others has a little humanity shown them.

A very remarkable story.

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.

The film is a series of profound moral dilemmas—while contrived by the author, they are fair questions—that resonate deeply in the 21st Century: The role of guilt in victims, perpetrators, individuals and collectively, as well as justice, forgiveness, redemption, shame and, of course, literacy and its role in Western thought.

All this is a pretty heady mix for a film, but Stephen Daldry (as with "The Hours" ) makes literary conceit play very naturally here. David Hare's screenplay and the remarkable cinematography of the always remarkable Roger Deakins together with a sensitive score by Nico Muhly, this is indeed rarefied film-making.

But the actors are what drag the audience into this story. David Kross is amazing as the young Michael who has to play a range of virginal innocent to wizened and bitter. It's the key role in the film, and we're all lucky he was found to play this role. And the ever confounding Kate Winslet. What an amazing career for this young actress! Running through a list of her credits, she has some of the best performances of the last decade: "Holy Smoke," "Eternal Sunshine…," "Iris," "Finding Neverland," "Little Children." But here she does something very different. Playing what amounts to a monster, we see that they too are human. Not many actresses could bring this off, but it may be her greatest accomplishment to date.

Ralph Fiennes brings a continuity to the work David Kross begins, and there's a brief appearance by Lena Olin who commands the dignity the role deserves.

I'm puzzled at the lukewarm reception to this film. I almost missed seeing it. And it turned out to be one of my favorite and the most heart-rending films of the year. All involved should be very proud.

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.

David Hare wrote one of my favorite female characters in "Plenty", Meryl Streep brought her to life in the most extraordinary way. Here, Hare writes another power house female character. It doesn't have the intellectual aspirations of "Plenty" but there is also a form of mental illness in his character. Kate Winslet is magnificent. Her early scenes with the wonderful David Kross are filled with compelling, contradictory and totally believable undertones. My misgivings are to be pinned on Stephen Daldry, the director. His sins as a filmmaker start to become a sort of trade mark, visible and palpable in the moving "Billy Elliot" and the shattering "The Hours" I can't quite pinpoint what it is but in "The Reader" that element is more obvious than in the other two. Maybe it has to do with loftiness. There are moments so frustratingly long and slow here that he lost me in more than one occasion. In any case, the cast makes this film a rewarding experience. Besides Kate Winslet and David Kross. The tortured Ralph Finnes has a couple of wonderful moments as well as Bruno Ganz and Lina Olin in a dual role.