Is redemption possible for someone who has committed acts of atrocity? That’s the question “The Reader” explores, and because it does so with complexity and moral ambiguity, it leaves the answer for you to decide. The film opens with the lead character, Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes as an adult, David Kross as a teenager) reflecting on his life from his current time period, which is 1995. Michael’s first meeting with Hanna Schmidtz (Kate Winslet) occurs in West Berlin in 1958. She is a toll taker on trams; he is a 15-year old boy coming down with Scarlet Fever. She finds him sick and near collapse near her apartment and takes him home. After recovering from the illness, Michael seeks her out to thank her and the two begin an affair. It lasts only one summer but it combines sex with Michael reading passages of literature to her. Eventually Hanna vanishes and Michael learns nothing more of her until 1966, when she is on trial for contributing to the murder of 300 Jews while she was serving as an SS guard at Auschwitz.
“The Reader” walks a fine line between presenting Hanna as too sympathetic (and thereby diminishing her complicity in genocide) and presenting her as totally evil. The first two-thirds of the film is the strongest. Those scenes, which record the affair and the impact the revelations about Hanna’s past have upon Michael, provide powerful storytelling and pose some interesting philosophical questions. As a teenager, Michael has no idea of Hanna’s dark past. When he finds out, he is torn between protecting the woman he loved and retreating from the horror of what she’s done. Plus he realizes he has information that could prove some of the charges against her false. The last third of the film is needlessly choppy, mainly because it covers too much time. Winslet is very effective as Hanna, a woman who has probably never come to grips with the enormity of her crimes, but nonetheless, believes that she is guilty of some transgressions. David Kross, too, is compelling as a confused young man who grows into a conflicted adult. 12/26/08
1 comment:
"The Reader" in many ways was a hard film to watch. The story is muddied with an older woman seducing a 15 year old boy and the producers making is seam like this was avery "normal", "satisfying" event. In fact, Hanna (Kate Winslet) was a genicidal rapist with very little redeaming factors to justify her. I am not sure about this film or the people who made it?
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