Stephen Daldry: The Reader (2008)

[Chris Knipp]

Stephen Daldry: The Reader (2008)

Review by Chris Knipp

[WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS]

Storytelling troubles

This isn't meet-cute. Fifteen-year-old schoolboy Michael Berg (David Kross) first encounters his 36-year-old future lover Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) by throwing up in her doorway. It's a dismal rainy day in a German city in 1958 and he has taken ill on the way home from school. She cleans him up and accompanies him to his family. He turns out to have scarlet fever, and is kept at home for months. Once he's well again he goes back carrying a bunch of flowers to thank Hanna for her kindness, but realizes he's turned on, and bolts in embarrassment while she's bathing. Eventually Michael returns and happily loses his virginity. A regular ritual of reading, bathing, and lovemaking develops between him and Hanna. He reads to her; she bathes him; the sex is mutual. She is a tram conductor with a harsh manner, and several huge secrets. She seems to be using Michael, but she's also enjoying him mightily, and he is reaping enormous rewards, though his affair puts pressure on his relations with family and schoolmates.

Bernhard Schlink's original The Reader was an international bestseller. A lawyer and judge who writes, Schlink departed from his usual detective stories with this novel that becomes a meditation on Nazism--the denial of the surviving participants and the incomprehension of Germans like Michael who were born in the aftermath. Michael's feelings toward Hanna become much more complicated than simply those of a youth introduced to love by an older woman--as complicated as the feelings of Germans about the demons in their modern past. As for Hanna, she seems to understand nothing and to be more concerned about how she appears than what she has done.

The book is in three parts. First there is the love affair of the schoolboy and the tram conductor, which ends abruptly and painfully when Hanna suddenly disappears. In the second part it's eight years later and Michael is a law student attending trials of Nazis with fellow students and their seminar teacher, Professor Rohl (Bruno Ganz). One day the young man is horrified and riveted to learn one of the defendants is none other than his long lost Hanna. She turns out to have been an SS guard at a satellite of Auschwitz and she's on trial with five other women for allegedly allowing several hundred prisoners to burn to death locked inside a church. This trial paralyzes Michael. He has never gotten over his first, interrupted love idyll with Hanna. Now he is filled with guilt for having loved her but also a sense that he should help her when he realizes he has information that might lower her sentence.

The last part, thirty years later, consists of several brief visits by Michael, first to Hanna in prison, then to the posh Manhattan flat of a Jewish woman, Rose Mather (Lena Olin), who was at the trial. She was one of the survivors and wrote a book about her experiences that was used in evidence. This provides a kind of coda.

Schlink's novel is neat and arresting, a page-turner that conceivably makes you think. Its Holocaust issues are cunningly intertwined with a sensuous--and rather peculiar--coming-of-age story told by a sensitive man still struggling to understand his experience and his country's. I read the book with interest, but found it a bit contrived. This together with Stephen Daldry's previous choice to film Michael Cunningham's The Hours shows a weakness on the English director's part for stories that are a little too clever and schematic.

This time the screenplay by the British playwright David Hare does damage to the book by altering its chronology, chopping it up and muddling the original linear three-part structure. Hare has said in interviews that the interpolated device of Michael's telling his story to his grown daughter was necessary to make sense of his voice-over. (That, however, is debatable.) Having settled on this device, Hare felt obligated to keep interjecting the mature Michael, played by Ralph Fiennes, at points throughout the film. The omnipresence of Fiennes' glum face undermines the sense of the young Michael's eagerness and, later, shock and confusion.

Fiennes as Michael revisits a cosmetically aged Kate Winslet as Hanna three decades later when she is about to be released from prison. Michael could never bring himself to visit her, but sent her tapes of himself reading the same books he read to her during their affair. Fiennes is a cold fish, hard to relate to the lively and sweet personality of young David Kross.

The film is hampered from the outset by its use of the outmoded artifice of dramatizing a story that takes place in another country and another language and yet having everyone speak English, with several of the main characters played by Brits (Winslet, Fiennes) putting on German accents. Bruno Ganz speaks with less of a German accent than they do.

There is much of interest in this glossy production, beautifully photographed on location by two of the best DP's in the business, Chris Menges and Roger Deakins. Ganz's professor is an ambiguous, subtle characterization. But since the drama of the unfolding story has been destroyed by breaking it up into pieces, the only thing that remains alive and beautiful and strange are the love scenes between Kross and Winslet. There is good chemistry between the 18-year-old Kross and the 34-year-old Winslet, and their nude scenes are bold and intimate. It's only when the machinery of what Schlink and the filmmakers are trying to tell us about German guilt and denial goes into action that things begin to be clunky and cold. Unfortunately, that is a big part of the picture.

[oscar jubis]

Kate Winslet in a protagonic role is more than enough reason for any film lover to check out THE READER. She's clearly one of the best actresses in the English language. Then come back and read what follows.

(SPOILERS)(SPOILERS!)

A major point of THE READER is that young Michael losses his innocence, what you call his "lively and sweet personality" once he finds out about Hanna's actions and affiliations during the war and her feeling of shame regarding a personal limitation. Moreover, he is ethically and emotionally troubled by the fact that he has certain information that would drastically reduce Hanna's sentence. He's confronted with a moral dilemma and chooses to respect Hanna's irrational decision not to reveal the shameful limitation that would partly exonerate her. The adult Michael is deeply affected and that's conveyed powerfully in Ralph Fiennes' performance. This is not the man Michael would have "grown into" if he had not met Hanna. He's been transformed by the experience in many ways.

Part of THE READER's uniqueness is how it finds the humanity, acknowledges the humanity, of a class of person that has often been equated with vicious animals. The film finds the perfect counterpoint when it introduces a Holocaust survivor in the final chapter. The scene set in the latter's America home, in which the camera lingers on the mementos of shtetl life and the pictures of exterminated relatives, balances any sympathy or empathy towards Hanna the film encourages the viewer to feel.

[Chris Knipp]

You appear to have liked the film more than I did. You also see the last scene differently. I don't think this one scene would be likely to 'balance" out sympathies--if they really needed balancing out, which I don't at all see that they do. I must say I missed the shtetl artifacts and was only wondering how she became so very rich. This character is not "introduced" in the last part; she was a character earlier too. She's "reintroduced", I believe. On the other hand, I don't think one really has much sympathy for Hanna as a character. You don't address the chronological structure issue that I mentioned and various others have also, perhaps because you have not read the book? I suppose this is a good performance by Winslet. I don't find her entirely convincing so it doesn't really work for me, not enough to say this shows her to be one of the best screen actresses today etc. I love Kate. She is a vibrant and attractive person. She certainly has talent and courage and can play many different types of roles. The only main actor I liked was David Kross. Ralph Fiennes is a cold fish. As I said in my review, he doesn't seem like the same person, and saying he's been "changed" doesn't do it for me. They might have tried a German actor. But the whole charade of playing Germany in English, which we're getting a spate of this season, seems outmoded (Defiance, Valkyrie, and this--and also The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which of all these is the one I really liked). Needless to say The Reader is worth seeing, especially for the earlier secenes, which are alive. But I don't think it wholly successful.
Part of THE READER's uniqueness is how it finds the humanity, acknowledges the humanity, of a class of person that has often been equated with vicious animals. That is dubious in my view. First of all, a minor SS collaborator isn't liiely to be equated with "vicious animals." Second, a more complex and interesting and morally complex Nazi character could be found in literature in many places surely, and in film. So it's not unique. What's unique is the reading gimmick. As for her her shame being not for her actions so much as for her lack of knowledge, that is hardly appealing or sympathetic. And this weakness is in the book and part and parcel with its artificiality.

[oscar jubis]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Chris Knipp
I must say I missed the shtetl artifacts and was only wondering how she became so very rich. This character is not "introduced" in the last part; she was a character earlier too. She's "reintroduced", I believe.
Right. The scene set in her American home is the second in which she appears. She appears initially in one of the last scenes during the court trial against the female SS guards.

You don't address the chronological structure issue that I mentioned and various others have also, perhaps because you have not read the book?
I don't have an issue with the temporal structure.
I haven't read the book and that has its advantages (it's easier to judge the film as a free-standing art or cultural artifact, the way it will be approached by the majority of its audience) and its disadvantages (inability to comment on the process of adaptation). As a matter of fact, your review has a valuable angle in that, because of your background and experience, you are uniquely qualified to comment on the adaptation from page-to-screen.
This is one assumption about me you can generally make: that I haven't read the books on which films are based. The vast majority of what I read is non-fiction (mostly film and philosophy books and essays, as of late) and the little fiction I read tends to be very classical.

But the whole charade of playing Germany in English, which we're getting a spate of this season, seems outmoded (Defiance, Valkyrie, and this--and also The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which of all these is the one I really liked).
Minor issue for me. Films in English are more likely to get exhibited in Asia and Latin America than films in German. Films with Kate Winslet are more likely to be exhibited throughout the world than films with German actors. It just doesn't make economic sense in this global economy to spend several millions doing period recreation for a film in German.

First of all, a minor SS collaborator isn't liiely to be equated with "vicious animals." Second, a more complex and interesting and morally complex Nazi character could be found in literature in many places surely, and in film. So it's not unique.
Hannah didn't "collaborate" with the SS. She was one of them. Curious about films you know that show the humanity of an SS guard the way this film depicts Hanna. I'm sure there are examples but not numerous and not quite to the degree shown in THE READER.

*I found the basic enigma of the film, Michael's decision not to get involved, quite compelling. Was it because he respects Hanna's decision not to divulge her illiteracy? Was it because he is ashamed of their relationship? Or both? Something else entirely? The answer is largely left up to the viewer to ponder. Perhaps someone who has read the book comes into the experience of the film with established viewpoints. Since I'm a film-critic-in-the-making not a literature critic, I'd rather read the book only after I've judged the film on its merits.

[cinemabon]

The Reader
While the Stephen Daltry adaptation of the Bernhard Schlink novel is not without its critics, I found the story captivating and compelling, worth more consideration than the New York Times gave the film (Ebert gave it thumbs up). "The Reader" is both complex love story and history lesson rolled into one package, beautifully photographed with exquisite detail and acted with tour de force performances by young David Kross, veteran Ralph Fiennes... with the most incredible performance by Kate Winslet by this actress or any actress this season. She brings such depth, such quixotic tilt that despite the ultimate revelation of her character, she is sympathetic and vulnerable. If Kate Winslet does not win the Academy Award this year for that performance, there is no justice in the world. Rarely do actresses give such soul bearing work on the screen. This is not demonstration. This is so real its scary.

What do you hide from us? What do you hide from others? What do we hide from ourselves? Are we afraid to be truthful? The questions posed in the telling of this tale go the heart of how we treat one another with quaint little white lies that cover our pain.

The film opens with Ralph Fiennes as Michael Berg in the present. He is a barrister or lawyer in present day Germany. After a brief scene, he glances out the window to see a passing trolley. The scene deftly cuts to Michael riding in a trolley in the 1950's barely a decade after the end of World War II. Germany is in terrible shape. Berlin is a mess. Michael is as sick as his surroundings, violently ill, on his way home from school. He does not make it. He stops in a doorway, vomiting, shaking with cold. A woman befriends him, brings him inside and offers temporary comfort. However, something passes between the fifteen-year-old and the thirty-something woman.

He wants to repay her kindness on a return visit but falls in the coal bin. When he takes a bath, she joins him... naked. So begins their love affair. After a few liasons, Hanna Schmitz, played by Kate Winslet, asks the young man to read to her when she spies his school books. He obliges in what turns in to a labor of love. However, along the way, we begin to realize that Hanna has a problem. She cannot read nor write. This handicap becomes the linchpin to a crucial element revealed later in the film, one that complicates Michael's life in his youth and throughout his life.

"The Reader" is a complex examination that offers no solutions, only problems. While part of the film centers on the holocaust, a more important aspect revolves around the willingness of people to see the truth about themselves and accept it. When we deny this truth, we kill that part inside us that is open and free. "The Reader" is one of those finely crafted works of art that needs to be seen by every critic on this site.


__________________

[cinemabon]

Additional comments:

I read the comments that both of you mentioned above. I must say I disagree with both of you. I found this film very interesting on so many levels. The character of Rose/Llana Mather is an ambiguous one, punctuated by the images of the holocaust but only in conjunction with the trial. They really do not reflect on Hannah but rather her co-conspirators. She seems to be the patsy in all of this, almost as innocent as the victims. She is honest with her feelings. Like the Jews, she feared the Nazis. She performed her job as told. We know she did not write the report. She probably had nothing to do with keeping the victims in the burning church either. However, she was the only one in the courtroom honest with her feelings.

Strange that when Michael goes to New York, the woman with whom we should feel the most sympathy comes across cold. However, she adds this caveat, "...all who go in that place come out changed." She doesn't care if Hannah is innocent or not of the crime. The only thing that matters is that she was a Nazi - guilt by association. Only Michael sees that.

The New York Times reviewer took offense by that observation, saying she felt it diminished the holocaust. I feel it showed that World War II had many victims. Not all were in concentration camps.

[oscar jubis]

I don't know what is it about my comments that you found disagreeable, cinemabon, so I cannot answer specifically.

Regarding your comments...
You write twice that Hanna is "honest with her feelings" in the courtroom but I don't remember her having much of an opportunity to discuss her feelings. She had an opportunity to discuss facts and she lied about those. As a consequence of her pride, the SS female guards who had even more responsibility for the tragedy did not get the punishment they deserved .

I also find your comment that she's "almost as innocent as the victims" to be rather extreme.

[cinemabon]

It was my interpretation that the other defendants chose not to speak. Hannah did not hold back her feelings. She expressed them freely. As to her innocence, I am not putting her on the same level as the victims... however, her ignorance as to the extent of her job's ramifications does excuse part of her awareness - in that regard, she is naive. Does that excuse all of her behavior? Probably not. I do not tend to side with Nazis. However, as the film pointed out, not everyone murdered although they wore the uniform. Soldiers fought in the trenches, but none were tried for war crimes. Many people wore the SS uniform. But some that did may not have perpetrate acts of extreme violence. Are we to assume, then, that anyone wearing the uniform was guilty of war crimes. Surly in Hannah's case, this was not indicated by the facts. In her trial, the other defendants made Hannah the 'fall guy' making it seem she was their leader. When in reality, the opposite was true. She had neither the skill nor the intelligence to be cunning. The dupe was a dope.


Should we then say that no matter what anyone says, if you were there, if you wore the uniform, if you worked in the camps, then you were guilty of a war crime although you may not have participated in the act... you may have been a janitor or a typist. It doesn't matter. You were there and did nothing. Therefore, you are guilty. Is that the logic? Remember, in Hannah's case, there were no witnesses... not even the survivors could identify her as the person responsible, only that she was there... so that was her crime? What of the others? They singled out Hannah because she was too afraid to admit her ignorance... and hence, she took the blame for something she did not do!


If Israeli soldiers are committing war crimes against Palestinians, as has been asserted in the press, should we hold them accountable after a truce is declared? Or will their actions simply be interpreted as part of combat? What about Mei Lei? What about Blackwater? How far do we allow soldiers to go before what they do is a war crime?

[Chris Knipp]

I'm glad to see some good discussion of this film on the site.

Oscar: on the issue of book vs. film adaptation. Complicated, as you know. I grant you that one may appreciate a film on its own better without even having read the book it's based upon. On the other hand, to review the film, it is helpful to have read the book, almost a requirement, if possible, to acquaint oneself with the book. But to hold a film accountable to a book is only justified for a classic. Revolutionary Road for instance, or one of Jane Austen's novels.

Sometimes ways the film adaptation departs from the book may help one see how the film succeeds or fails. In this case (The Reader), the departure from the straightforward chronology of the book, in my opinion, and I found in the opinion of many reviewers, weakens the emotional force of the story as presented in Daldry's film. Incidentally I saw the Broadway productions of Frost/Nixon and Doubt and think both film versions are better, for me anyway, than the stage versions. That opinon is shared by some reviewers at least on Frost/Nixon. Some think the original actors for Doubt were better and that's debatable; arguably Streep and Hoffman are too recognizable. Both films make use of cinematic technique to bring out better what the plays were getting at, but Frost/Nixon particularly works well, with its emphasis on cameras and lights and TV interviews; the play production had onscreen projections. Often the passage of time can be handled better in a novel where one can imagine characters aging and a casting director doesn't have to try to find two or three or more people to embody successive stages. It's hard to see Ralph Fiennes as a mature David Kross. The younger actors in Slumdog Millionaire don't really resemble Dev Patel.

As for criticisms of The Reader. Some (perhaps many?) find the treatment of Hanna's moral responsibility questionable , saying she's as innocent in her way as the Jewish camp victims are in theirs, highly dubious. But this is the same as the book; it's not to be blamed on Daldry or Hare, unless one blames them for choosing to adapt Schink's novel in the first place. Hanna does, after all, go to jail for a long time. War criminals are tried and held responsible and soldiers are called upon not to obey when ordered to violate international law. The distinction between what is wrong and what is punishable under the law is described in the film and the book. The story points out how a trial may not bring the most guilty to full justice. Hanna was not the one they were really looking for who signed the orders. The author of the book is a lawyer and a judge, hence the whole focus of the story, Michael's choice to become a lawyer, the trial, and so on. This may be developed a little more clearly in the book, but barely. I sympathize with Manolah Dargis' NYTimes review but it contains some really bad writing and goes way too far. To say that the film aims to make people feel good about the Holocaust overstates the case.

Cinemabon: I do find the book and film interesting, very much so. In spite of the glossy production and fine acting I don't think the film is quite as successful as the book. This is due to the mature Michael (Fiennes) being injected too much into the whole course of the film, and the artificial device of having everybody speak English when they're German.

I would like to reiterate that I think the young actor David Kross is the best of the principals and it seems to me unfortunate that Winslet gets so much praise and he is not mentioned. I'm sure she is aware that Kross is a big factor in the success of her performance. Winslet arguably is better in Revolutionary Road. Both roles are feathers in her cap. I suspect that she has done and will do better. People are just forced by her two performances in Oscar bait films released at the end of the same year to notice her more than they did before. I also happen to think Leo is better than Kate in Revolutionary Road, but I'm getting off the topic.

[cinemabon]

I must strongly agree on Mr. Kross, whom I understand delayed production due to his age. In an interview he thanked Kate Winslet for helping to "protect me from the crew during the shoot." Evidently, he was so embarrassed by the nudity scenes, he nearly walked out. It was Winslet that gave him support, allowing the young star to remain covered until the cameras rolled.

As I said to my wife when we watched the other night, "I believe that is the first film I have ever seen in my life that had such obvious full frontal male nudity and did not cut right away to another shot (you can't count "Boogie Nights" ending... that was CGI!). That is another asset besides his superior acting ability that Mr. Kross may express pridefully.

Kross also gave some scenes such as the Auschwitz walkthrough (my wife visited the camp) and Hannah's trial powerful emotional underpinnings, supporting their importance to the story. My wife said that walking through the camp was a very dark experience, listening to the tour guide while seeing the stark conditions. However, when she entered the showers, she said that a bone chilling cold came over her that sent her and others outside - trembling with fear. She is convinced that something very terrible hovers over that place. "Once you visit Auschwitz," she told me, "you believe everything about the holocaust... and you never want to go back."

This is where I disagree with the Times. Going back to the holocaust does not diminish its place in history or its power as a reminder to blind racism. The world should have a very special holiday annually where every living human is reminded that hatred of this magnitude destroys the last vestige of morality. That leads to only one conclusion... permanent extinction of goodness.

"All are punished!"

[Chris Knipp]

I think Boogie Nights was a prosthetic. David Kross and Kate Winslet were on Charlie Rose together and it was obvious the rapport between them and the affection, in a nice way, between her and him. He has been in several films with starring roles and seems to be the up and coming young German film actor. I'm sure it was hard to be in the nude scenes but there's nothing timid about them, maybe his uneasiness helps give the scenes an edge and a real feeling.

As I said, and I think we agree on this, Manohla Dargis of the NYTimes went overboard and was glib and flip in her review saying things like this is meant to make you feel good about the Holocaust. The book and the movie focus on the point of view of people who were Michael's age and hence did not actually live through the War with any real awareness at the time. Michael's discovering Hanna's dark past is a metaphor for this German generation's coming to terms with the Thrid Rieich after the fact.

[tabuno]

My sympathies go with Oscar Jubis' commentary and support of this movie. In fact, it's my pick so far for best movie of the year (not having seen "Milk"), and it also made my top ten movie list of any year.

This is one of the few movies, perhaps only movie I've seen this year that the flashback and chronological swifting worked seamlessly. Going even further, this movie has some of the best flashback techniques I've experienced. The director took a lot of care in developing his flashbacks for this movie and carefully labelling places and dates to help the audience with the flow and continuity of the scenes. But there were also uses of great authetnic associations (i.e., like the tram car where a boy appears to look like Michael as a boy that brings up a past memory sequence).

This movie resonates in its use of universal themes as well as helping to remind us of forgotten historical experiences (some that I have never experienced in quite the same way as presented in this film) that are quickly fading from our memories. The very last scene is remarkable in that it is the only movie to have reminded me since "Fahrenheit 451" (1966) of the importance of storytelling and of oral history of passing one's legacy and important life experience onto the next generation.

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, THE READER "resonates in its use of universal themes." And the Academy likes to be seen as favoring films that do that. Indeed especially favored to this purpose are films about Holoocaust subjects (SHINDLER'S LIST, THE PIANIST)--sure-fire Oscar bait.

Still, I don't think THE READER is going to make it and I don't think it should bescause there are stronger candidates on the Best Picture list. (I can think of still stronger ones not on that list.)

I also, tabuno, don't think Oscar has decided what the best picture is, or chosen THE READER for that slot on his own list.

I'd like to go back again and comment on a couple other posts. On rereading Oscar's response to me on the language issue, I'm surprised at his justification for an English language movie about 1950's Germany on the grounds that a German film wouldn't play in Latin America or Asia. Tant pis. And should the Germans then stop making films? How about the French? Or for that matter, the South Americans, whose films won't play well in Asia? I wonder what Oscar's idol Jonathan Rosenbaum would have to say about such a position. How about a movie about 1930's New York, in which everybody speaks Spanish? "Minor issue for" you? Or a movie set in Argentina in which everybody speaks English? "Minor issue"?

Again, I agree with you, cinemabon, on the Kross-Winslet scenes' freshness and boldness. However, the French have full frontal male nudity pretty often in films, so this didn't seem so unusual--though having a teenage boy frontally nude in a sex scene with an older woman is a shocker, for the USA anyway.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Still, I don't think THE READER is going to make it and I don't think it should bescause there are stronger candidates on the Best Picture list.
Harvey Weinstein is doing everything in his power to get "his" movie a Best Picture Oscar as he has done in the past. He has been campaigning heavily. He's reminding voters this was the last movie produced by the recently deceased and widely acclaimed Sidney Pollack and Tony Minghella, and tellling Jewish members who may be upset about the sympathetic portrayal of the protagonist that the Anti-Defamation League and Elie Wiesel have given their "seals of approval", so to speak. I like THE READER a little more than MILK (safe as...), the only film that could take Oscar away from SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (a gorgeous fairy tale that should not have been nominated but will likely win).

I also, tabuno, don't think Oscar has decided what the best picture is, or chosen THE READER for that slot on his own list.
THE READER is not my favorite film of the year (CHOP SHOP is) but tabuno is not claiming that it is. He is just agreeing with my support and endorsement of this excellent drama. By the way, thanks tabuno.

On rereading Oscar's response to me on the language issue, I'm surprised at his justification for an English language movie about 1950's Germany on the grounds that a German film wouldn't play in Latin America or Asia. Tant pis.
Let's face it. English is the world's language. The number of people around the world that would sit for two hours to watch a film in German with a stranger playing Hanna is miniscule compared to the number of people worldwide that will watch an English-language film with the big star from Titanic in the main role.

[Chris Knipp]

The bigger star from TITANIC is Leo. I don't expect to see him do a movie speaking English when he's supposed to be German. (Actually he did one where he was supposed to be French, TOTAL ECLIPSE, but who saw it?) I can't remember whether I've seen CHOP SHOP, but I guess I have. MILK is not a great movie but it is admirable in many ways and important to me as a San Franciscan and a gay person concerned about Prop. 8. What about BENJAMIN BUTTON? It has an extraordinary number of Oscar noms:

13 BUTTON
10 SLUMDOG
8 MILK
5 THE READER
5 FROST/NIXON
5 DOUBT

Only 9 pictures in Oscar history have had 13 noms and 2 have had 14, according to AMC Filmsite (http://www.filmsite.org/oscars2.html#2) It is looking like BUTTON, SLULMDOG and MILK are the Best Picture leaders. The Academy would appear to "like" MILK "a little more" than THE READER. Perhaps some other way will be found to celebrate the late Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack besides awarding their film the top prize.

Good luck to Harvey. He is a great maneuverer, but he does not always succeed. As for Elie and the ADL, I guess any Holocaust movie is a good Holocaust movie, even one that excuses an SS guard.
Let's face it. English is the world's language. The number of people around the world that would sit for two hours to watch a film in German with a stranger playing Hanna is miniscule compared to the number of people worldwide that will watch an English-language film with the big star from Titanic in the main role.So what? Is this the passionate advocate of small films and Latin American films and the devout fan of Jonathan Rosenbaum talking? and what does it mean anyway to say "English is the world's language"? I don't think we have to "face" anything. There are many languages and many cultures and many histories and they deserve to be appreciated in authentic forms, and subtitles are less an obstacle than they used to be even with popular audiences. And there is, at worst, dubbing. I would rather see Hanna played by a German woman.

[tabuno]

tabuno's top ten movies of 2008

(subject to change with regards to movies not yet seen)*

1. The Reader
2. Mama Mia!!!
3. Body of Lies
4. The Women
5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
6. Get Smart
7. The Chronicles of Naria: Prince Caspian
8. WALL*E
9. Tropic Thunder
10. Slumdog Millionaire

*including:

Australia
The Changling (Angelina Jolie)
Che
Defiance
Doubt (Meryl Streep)
Flash of Genius
Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood)
Happy Go Lucky
Milk (Sean Pean)
Pineapple Express
Rachel Getting Married (Anne Hathaway)
The Secret Life of Bees
Under The Same Moon
Valkyrie
Waltz with Bashir (Israel)
The Wrestler (Mickey Rourke)

[Chris Knipp]

tabuno, old chap, why don't you put this on the Filmleaf contributor's 2009 best list thread (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2453), where it sholud be and everybody can find it? It doesn't belond here and people won't see it when they're looking up our movie favorites lists. Can you do that, please? Thanks!

[Johann]

I saw Holland's Total Eclipse.
Loved it.
It's a bit freaky-deaky in some places, but that was Rimbaud & Verlaine. They had a wierd relationship.

[Chris Knipp]

I'm glad you saw it. Leo doesn't sound right but he looks right and acts right in it and he gets to play opposite David Thewlis which, I guess, is pretty close to as good as it gets.

[Chris Knipp]

But hey again tabuno, can you post your favorites over on the Filmleaf contributor's 2009 best list thread (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2453), please?

[tabuno]

Chris Knipp wondered why I posted my top ten movie list on this thread, asserting that it didn't belong here. The irony is that it is because of Chris Knipp's earlier comment that I posted it here. He earlier wondered why the focus on "The Reader" and wondered about "Benjamin Button" and "Slumdog Millionaire." I wanted to point out that I had both these movies also on my list that I considered to be top movies of the year and that I for one wasn't dismissing either of them. I just wanted to explain this so that somebody wouldn't think I couldn't read or had an IQ of 50 or so.

[Chris Knipp]

I certainly didn't mean to imply anything like that. Anyway, I'm glad you've posted a fuller list on the thread for Filmleaf contributors' 2009 favoritres, with descriptions of each of your choices plus 'good but', 'terrible,' and 'not seen yet' categories. Great!

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Is this the passionate advocate of small films
There's a lot of truth in this. If what we mean by "small" is "low budget", the truth is that the lower the budget the lower the pressure from producers to make a film that would be marketable to a large segment of the population. This often leads to a number of artistic compromises that result in a lesser film. Then again, allow me to bring up some of the recent films that I can wholeheartedly and mindfully call masterpieces. Is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind a "small film" when it stars Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet and Kirsten Dunst? No way. Half Nelson (best film of 2006, in my opinion) has a small budget but Ryan Gosling had become a true star after his turn in The Notebook. My favorite film of 2008, Chop Shop is, by all means, a small film. Overall I'd agree that I am a "passionate advocate of small films" but it's not simply because they're "small". It's because being small makes it easier or possible for their makers to be original and experimental or true to their artistic vision.

and Latin American films
During the 1980s and most of the 1990s, I wasn't much of a passionate advocate of Latin American films. Why not? Because there were few exceptional films coming out of Latin America. That changed. The change borders on the revolutionary. In the past decade, Argentina, and to a lesser extent Mexico and Brazil, have emerged as among the nations producing the world's best cinema. In that regard, they have surpassed other "small national cinemas" like Taiwan, South Korea and Iran. Not that those countries have stopped producing great cinema. Not at all. In Europe, Romania and Spain are producing great cinema lately. That, in Asia, China has totally eclipsed Japan almost goes without saying.

the devout fan of Jonathan Rosenbaum
I didn't respond when you called him my "idol", but it's beginning to get ridiculous. Rosenbaum is "the dean" of American critics who are immune to what the market forces tell them is good and important, take a global view of the art of film and film criticism, and are perennial students of film history. He is not the only one though. And my posture towards him is not one of idolatry and devotion.

what does it mean anyway to say "English is the world's language"?
It means that a film in English reaches millions more than a film in any other language, and that a film distributed by a US studio gets into theaters in Cameroon, Sri Lanka and El Salvador whereas a film without that kind of backing does not. And that millions more are interested in a film starring Kate Winslet than a film starring any German actress of her generation. This is not ideal but it's factual. Accessibility and dissemination are important considerations.

[Chris Knipp]

I meant no harm nor idolatry by calling JR your "idol." I was aware that it was not the right word and that you always bristle when I use it, but I couldn't think of one word that would work better. I simply meant the film writer you most admire. 'Dean'? I would not use that myself because it implies a consensus that doesn't exist. Nor should we expect a consensus in a field which by nature requires not following anyone's lead. JR is respected. He's also retired. Dean emeritus, maybe. Hoberman has, and also previously had, more visibility, and is highly respected. There are others who are respected, including Roger Ebert, who is far more widely known and therefore in the category of universality you are talking about here in reference to movies.

The point is, Rosenbaum is and was surely disturbed by American and particularly commercial Hollywood film hegemony. What is the point of justifying the incongruity, the patent lack of verisimilitude, of a German historical story filmed in Germany but in the English language, on the grounds that it will get wider promotion and distribution worldwide for that reason? So what? What's that got to do with whether it's a good film or not? But isn't that our concern here? These big worldwide distributions you're talking about are precisely the demonstrations of Hollywood dominance that Rosenbaum has objected to so strongly.

I was not aware we were looking for universal movies or movies that will be big box office all over the world. I more than you perhaps am pleased when a mainstream movie turns out to be really good. You have not usually agreed on these. Examples of how you favor films not likely to have major worldwide distribution is your choosing Half Nelson as the best of two years ago and Chop Shop as best of this year. Ryan Gosling, by the way, is likely to have offbeat roles, despite that success with the tear-jerker.

I don't have any idea in how many "millions" are "interested" in watching Kate Winslet, but I didn't think that was our concern here.

I knew what you meant by English is the universal language. i just don't think it means anything to our discussions on this site as people who care about good movies. It's a commercial and promotional and even a propaganda issue, not an aesthetic one. Our interest, and Rosenbaum's, has been in having more "small" films from more countries, in the most "obscure" of languages, available for us to see--precisely the opposite of full system dominance by a product of Hollywood hegemony--however credentialed by foreign or literary sources pedigrees.

[oscar jubis]

If Rosenbaum dismisses the importance of theatrical accessibility in terms of exhibition in a wide variety of markets, and perhaps he does or doesn't focus on it, then he and I have a difference of opinion. I think it's a good thing that The Reader will be seen by more people worldwide precisely because of Winslet and her Oscar.

The piece posted below was written to be read in front of an academic audience who has seen the film. This is the maximum length allowed (so that essays can be read and discussed within the available time). It concerns aspects of the film (and the book) deemed controversial because of what it might say or imply about the Holocaust and the extent to which the "average" German is to blame. The piece obviously contains "spoilers" and it's not (quite) the type of review that would appear in a newspaper. I don't know whether this type of essay "fits" into what members and guests expect to find in our beloved site.

The Reader
Oscar Jubis
2 March 2009


The Reader is based on the controversial bestseller by German judge and novelist Bernhard Schlink. The titular protagonist is Michael Berg, introduced to us as a middle-aged man living in Berlin in 1995. The sight of a U-Bahn triggers a memory of the time when he was 15 years old, in the late 1950s, riding a tram and feeling sick. That was the day he met Hanna, a woman in her mid-30s, who assisted and nursed him. The Reader deploys a flashback structure to shuttle the viewer back and forth over five decades, one episode per decade. Those corresponding to the decades of the 50s through the 80s primarily depict stages in the relationship between Michael and Hanna. The brief scenes set in the 90s focus on Michael’s decision to disclose the significance of that relationship for the first time, to his daughter, as a way to foster intimacy between them and, one presumes, as a form of self-therapy.

In The Reader, the audience is aligned with Michael’s point of view. We rarely know more about Hanna than what he knows. In high school, Michael learns that Western literature is based on secrecy, on the withholding of information and this applies to Schlink’s novel and to the film. Our first impression of Hanna is that she is a helpful, caring, confident and desirable woman. She is a patient lover, curious about the world and appreciative of literature. She’s a woman thoroughly capable of experiencing the simple joys of riding a bike through the countryside, swimming in a natural pool or making love to exhaustion. We understand how Michael would fall in love with her. We’re also aware, of course, of their country’s recent history. That legacy is subtly evoked: a glimpse of Michael’s stamp collection shows some Third Reich swastika stamps; the glass door of Hanna’s apartment is etched with tiny regular hexagrams or Stars of David _one wonders whether Jews once lived there; and Hanna’s dark, rather severe, work uniform is reminiscent of Nazi-era attire. However, viewers who approach the film having no knowledge of the plot are as surprised as Michael when he learns, during a trial, that Hanna was an SS guard during WWII.

The episode set in the 60s brings forth the film’s major theme: the unavoidable conflict between the generation of Germans who committed genocide and the first post-Holocaust generation, who must grapple with the fallout. Michael and Hanna are representative characters and their relationship is a metaphor for the inter-generational discourse. There are other SS guards being brought to justice and other law students present in the courtroom but The Reader‘s undivided attention on Michael and Hanna renders them emblematic. Hanna is an extraordinary SS guard in that most members of that Nazi paramilitary force were well-educated men. By making “our” SS guard a female and concealing her murderous past during its first half, The Reader encourages the viewer to feel sympathy for her. We learn Hanna played a role in the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands , and simultaneously witness how her colleagues make her bear the bulk of the blame for the burning death of 300 women inside a locked church. Like Michael, we are forced to regard her as both perpetrator and victim. The moral bankruptcy intrinsic in her apparent belief that her role in the Holocaust is less shameful than illiteracy coexists with the implication that her despicable actions are mollified by her inability to read. If Hanna is our genocidal model then The Reader suggests that the average German of her generation was unable to “read” the signs pointing towards a Final Solution when in fact those signs were loud and clear. Moreover, the film privileges a tragedy that might not have occurred if not for the bombing carried out by Allied pilots. The fact that the victims died inside a church is a subtle reminder of the failure of Christianity in general, and the Catholic Church in particular, to exercise its power and influence to attempt to prevent the Holocaust. Therefore The Reader fabricates a story that serves to relieve the German people of culpability by suggesting that there were mitigating factors and that the blame must be shared with the world-at-large.

Michael also emerges as a highly ambiguous character. He is equated with Holocaust victims by the fact that Hanna casts him in the role of reader, just like the girls she ultimately selected to die at the concentration camps. Michael’s relationship with Hanna marks him for life to the extent that he seems incapable to truly love another. On the other hand, his secrecy regarding Hanna’s illiteracy results in several SS guards receiving lighter sentences than they deserved. He shares with members of Hanna’s generation an unwillingness to tell the whole truth and come to terms with it. It’s to the film’s credit that it bears this out. Moreover, if the ideological basis of the Holocaust is the characterizations of Jews as less than human, not unlike notions about race used to justify the enslavement of Africans and the carpet bombings during the Vietnam War, then The Reader’s invitation to regard a member of a most despised group with sympathy and empathy is an edifying challenge to the viewer. If the most compelling expression of belief in freedom of speech is the defense of speech that is conspicuously offensive like, for instance, an ACLU lawyer defending the rights of the KKK to parade down Main Street, then The Reader’s exhortation to acknowledge Hanna as no more but certainly no less than a human being is a morally uplifting endeavor.

[Chris Knipp]

If the most compelling expression of belief in freedom of speech is the defense of speech that is conspicuously offensive like, for instance, an ACLU lawyer defending the rights of the KKK to parade down Main Street, then The Reader[�]s exhortation to acknowledge Hanna as no more but certainly no less than a human being is a morally uplifting endeavor. Sure; you're right. That's fair. The trouble is, this doesn't make The Reader a good book or a good film. And I'm surprised you, who seem to be more in love with film as film than I am, have continued to overlook the weaknesses of the film as film as well as being seduced by the ideas that don't make a very good book, though I guess you have not bothered to read it to consider that. It's not long. You could have. And for an "academic audience," one would think you would have wanted to have read it. The movie tries to follow the book closely, even though it botches up the effect of the book in a major way by playing with the chronology, which you resolved earlier by saying it didn't "bother" you." That's not adequate as an argument. You can't justify something others find as faults in a work by saying they don't "bother" you. You have to explain how they are not faults. But throughout this report on the film you ignore its cinematic aspects and talk about it as if it where a story, a book, or a play, or anything. How does this work for film class? Relating the film to the novel would have been a good basis for discussing the film as film.

NOTE on typography on this site: as you know, this site doesn't accept any accent marks. When you paste in a text from MS Word and some other sites, the curved apostrophe symbols all come out as little black symbols with white question marks in them. In short, it makes your text look silly. You have to go back and insert straight-line apostrophes by typing them into the text on the site with your keyboard.

Of course, maybe you would like the book, if you are seduced by a novel's ideas and moral message regardless of its artificiality as fiction. It's not a complete loss as a book; it's worth reading. But it feels contrived. And that effect is carried over into the film and perhaps magnified, as faults can be when something is transferred into another medium. Ijust don't see how you can consider this one of the best films of the year, but I guess that just shows that it wasn't an outstanding year.

P.s. Sorry if this sounds rude, blunt, and grouchy. It's been a long day, and it's late. I feel this is a repetition of what you've said before. I's a valid justification of the "content' of the film (and the novel) but not of the film's merit otherwise. Not to justify your rating it one of the year's best and tabuno's listing it as number one. I still thing the best thing bout the movie is the sex scenes between the boy and the thirty-something woman. The post-Holocaust generational ruminations are only skin-deep.

[tabuno]

From a technical and aesthetic standpoint "The Reader" presents one of the best uses of flashback techniques which was in part the reason I felt this was the best movie of 2008 (of those movies I've seen so far). The movie was carefully edited with associative connections that reflect how our human minds actually relate to memory and past events and the past reflections portrayed in the film contained those pertinent memories associated with important events and emotions often connected with flashback and made relevant to the present day happenings. The naturalness of the editing here was superior and enhanced the unfolding of the story with a compelling and interesting mystery.

What made this movie even more effective was unlike Oscar Jubis's description of Kate Winslet's character, there was a significant off-balanced, guarded personality that crept off the screen, making her character not completely likeable. She came off sometimes abrupt, cold, and snappish...yet it was these character flaws that added to the charm of the movie, the authenticity of a more complex character. Also the moral foundation of this movie by the end appeared to be folded into the apparent end of Kate Winslet's character suggesting in itself the act revealing a deeper German moral psyche of politically correct and redemptive value.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
P.s. Sorry if this sounds rude, blunt, and grouchy. It's been a long day, and it's late.
Thanks for the reply anyway. It's not rude, etc. but it is mostly a reinstatement of what you've said before, except for your agreement with my final paragraph and your note on the typography (it reads fine on Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, but next time I paste from Word 2007, I'll redo the apostrophes. Thanks). Anyway, perhaps my intentions would be clearer if I title the piece "The Reader in the context of Holocaust fiction" although my introductory remarks allude to precisely that. It's not about the book-to-film process, the cinematography, etc. I mention the book in that the comments I make happen to apply to both the book (based on my research on it not my reading of it) and the film.

Originally posted by tabuno
What made this movie even more effective was unlike Oscar Jubis's description of Kate Winslet's character, there was a significant off-balanced, guarded personality that crept off the screen, making her character not completely likeable. She came off sometimes abrupt, cold, and snappish...
This is true. Two scenes in particular. In her apartment, when he first looks at her with desire, she reacts by asking him to leave, seemingly ambivalent about starting a sexual relationship with Michael. Then, in the tram, she rejects him because she obviously wants to keep their relationship private. But being "cold and snappish" as you correctly describe is understandable given the context and not something that affects the overall positive regard we have for her, in my opinion.