The Reader

The Notion of Secrecy

“ The notion of secrecy is central to literature…”

Have you ever had a secret that you felt compelled to keep? Has guilt ever been an overwhelming demon stabbing you from within?

Secrets and guilt fuel and drive the main characters in Bernhard Schlink’s best-selling novel-turned-film The Reader.

Set in post WWII Germany this film, directed by Stephen Daldry (The Hours), is a captured moment framed by German war guilt. Mixed with love and lies, the dismal feeling of a haunting past is brought to life through a series of secrets that change and chart the course of two lives forever.

The story begins in Germany, 1958, where Hanna Smitz, played by Kate Winslet, and 15-year-old Michael Berg, played by David Kross and Ralph Finnes (adult Michael), get caught up in an affair that will last a lifetime. Though the physical nature of their relationship lingers only for one memorable summer, their lives remained inevitably intertwined.

Hanna, a simple and plain woman living on her own, finds Michael outside of her building, sick and helpless. She comes to his aid, ensuring that he arrives home safely, and during which captures the young and impressionable boy with her womanly, yet slightly stifled, beauty.

When Michael returns, flowers in hand, to thank Hanna for her kindness, they are soon swept into a passionate affair that borders on uncomfortable. Though much of their relationship seems to be centered on sex, Hanna has Michael read to her, a touching yet slightly strange ritual that becomes the theme of the entire movie.

Their relationship never develops beyond the walls of Hanna’s apartment. Secrecy shrouds their courtship as neither divulges to anyone what they have come to feel for one another. As well their lives, beyond what they have developed together, have remained secret to one another, something Michael brings to light more than once in the first half of the film.

Though it appears that they are in love, everything comes to a grinding halt when Hanna suddenly leaves town, and leaves behind Michael’s broken heart.

Flash-forward— Michael has grown into a young law student. He has been assigned the task of attending a war tribunal in relation to six female guards that are standing trial for crimes committed while working at Nazi a concentration camp.

Though Michael and his classmates are meant to ponder the ideas of justice, and to see the difference between what is law and what is moral, he is laden with another emotion. During his first visit to the courthouse Michael realizes that his first love, Hanna, is standing with the defendants, awaiting the verdict.

Hit with the truth that had, until that very moment, remained Hanna’s secret, Michael is troubled by a love tainted by war. What was once pure and exciting had become part of the desolate past facing generations of Germany yet to come.

If you can get past the first 45 minutes of Kate Winslet nudity, the rest of the film is saturated with thought provoking metaphors, dialogue, and plot.

The idea of secrecy runs throughout the entire film, weaving together a convoluted web of deceit, that if spoken aloud may have changed the course of the lives that Hanna Smitz and Michael Berg came to live.

The question of whether keeping secrets is noble or perverse is presented to the viewer on more than one occasion. This is meant to leave you wondering whether it is better to seclude information and in turn seclude oneself, or face the consequences of disclosing the secret.

Aside from her naked body, Winslet brings to the screen a well-crafted character that you will both love and hate in equal amounts. Her performance is the best I have seen from her, and should she win is certainly worthy of the Oscar for which she is nominated.

Though the film left me thinking about a great many things, at the forefront is the idea that secrets, if left for too long, can eat you from the inside out.

I am rating this movie a 3.5/5 Light Bulbs. I would have given it more if I didn’t have to stare Winslet’s high beams for so long.

Parental Note: This movie contains many scenes of nudity, along with varying depictions of sexual situations.

** Photo courtesy www.telegraph.co.uk

Recommendations: Wizard of Oz

The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008)

**½
USA/Germany

Bernhard Schlink’s novel was a solid, moderately sophisticated, resolutely commercial exploration of enduring German post-Holocaust guilt, with its primary strength being its sifting of a prestige-packaged-out topic through the repercussions of an illicit erotic attachment between a pubescent wimp and an erratic cipher twice his age.

None of the book’s sincere questioning or sense of time and place survives this ossified, atrociously directed adaptation, whose chief reason for existing is several people’s ravenous Oscar-hunger. It’s a relief that the otherwise lovely Kate Winslet finally has hers, so that she can stop selecting parts based on their FYC-campaigns. But the performance itself is all wrong from her first tentative spurts of a flaky Tscherman akcent through to her insistence on emphasising the cuddly, misunderstood simpleton behind the outwardly cold Nazi and all the way through to her uneasy pitching of a youthful timbre against the dazzlingly 1930s-biopic-pasty aging make-up.

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The Reader

I give the movie: 3.0/5

Academy Award winner for Best Actress? Well-deserved. But Best Picture nominee? The Dark Knight definitely deserved to fill that spot than The Reader.

SYNOPSIS

The film follows a 15-year-old boy who falls for a train-attendant who's twice his age. Their sexual routines are interlaced with him reading stories to her, and this continues until their push-and-pull relationship come to an abrupt end, leaving the boy upset and confused. It is only later realised that the woman is harbouring a terrible secret in a sensitive time in Germany, and which begins a heartbreaking story of the two individuals, whose mutual acquaintance forever changed their lives.

PRAISES & FLAWS

The incomparable Kate Winslet is obviously the star of the show here. Her transformation from a strong-headed yet distraught woman charged in court to a pitiful old woman is heart-wrenching to watch. While both Ralph Fiennes and his 15-year-old portrait performed well also, the adapted screenplay suffered from a lack of a clear emotional depth that the audience can connect with.

FINAL SAY:
An often depressing film, it is the actors' performances that add colour to the bleak template.

Wilson Ng - http://wilsoniscurious.blogspot.com/

Last updated: 2010-03-14 05:14:49 by wilsoniscurious

The Reader

This is a beauty and the beast story and it tells a hard truth: love does not redeem monsters. We’re so used to thinking of evil as an abhorrence or as something alluring that it’s easy to overlook the everyday middle-ground; that evil can be commonplace, that evil people go about their lives in the millions… that half of them (all of them?) are us. And if there are so many evil people then it stands to reason some people will love them. But love won’t undo anything. That’s what The Reader says. The best you can hope for, if you love an evil person, is that you’ll be honest with yourself, and admit there is evil. If not, what can you hope to learn?

In Germany in the 1950s a teenage boy meets a woman in her thirties. The boy, like every boy, wants sex, but he also wants romance. The woman is amenable to the first. Lucky boy. But then, why is this woman so secretive? And where is she looking when she looks past him? The boy, not knowing anything about the world, doesn’t see her very clearly. He’s consumed with sex. When the woman asks the boy to read to her, he takes this for intimacy. And it is. But it’s the only intimacy she requires of him. Fucking remains fucking. When pressed for nearness, the woman can only respond with spite. Then she leaves him. The boy is heart-broken. But this is not the last time he’ll see her, nor the worst thing she’s ever done.  During WWII, the woman was a guard at a Nazi concentration camp.

Kate Winslet looks at the boy, her co-star (David Kross), like a schoolteacher who hates her work. The boy doesn’t see it, but we do. She is not as he pictures her, half matriarch, half whore. She is a worker bee, someone who likes authority. She has a small authority over this boy, and it pleases her. Read to me, she can order. And he does. She is not sentimental about their relationship, but she doesn’t have imagination to see his point of view either. Here is woman who has bleached her heart. She seldom laughs; not because (if only) she knows what she has done, but because she’s largely humourless. It requires a virgin gaze to romanticise her. Anyone who’d had sex before would see her less appealing qualities. But she gets lucky. It’s her lover’s first love, sweeping and oblivious.

The role of her lover is split into two parts; the boy who has the love affair is played by David Kross, the man he grows up to be is played by Ralph Feinnes. The boy is guileless, loving, passionate. The man is none of these. How much is Kate Winslet’s fault? If the boy had not met her, or if he had not met her again, he would have been different. But these are his circumstances. Her circumstances compelled her to commit terrible crimes and to flee from them. The boy runs when he should stay too. But they are not alike. This is because Ralph Feinnes can redeem himself – he has a daughter, someone he loves. The lesson he learns from his tragic affair is that a big enough secret can cut off every possibility of joy. This is not the same as saying if Kate had told the truth she would have been a better person, only thatbecause she didn’t tell the truth she compounded evil with a self-betrayal, and took away any hope she could ever have of saving something in her worth loving.

The phrase “I would never…” hinges a lot on where and when you live. We all like to imagine ourselves as good people, indomitable. But how high have the stakes ever been in our lives? How much have we been tested? If society itself gives in to evil, then it really does fall to us to know right from wrong, because no-one is there to offer a reminder. These were Kate Winslet’s circumstances. Her society said: we will redefine what is good and what is evil. And she went along with it. The boy she fucks knows he would have done likewise. Do we get to judge these people? Or do we count our blessings? Evil is always clearly evil, but evil people aren’t constant; neither are you or I.

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THE READER (2008)

BOTTOM LINE: Ultimately flat, and uncomfortably melding a touching love story with the seriousness of a Nazi war crime trial, “The Reader” may have been Oscar-worthy due to its ideas on paper but it does not resonate with the thematic gravity that it should, largely due to its dry and uninteresting execution.

THE GOOD: Much of what works in “The Reader” is its attempt to cover so much thematic ground. As a whole, the film speaks to dealing with the consequences of your actions, whether they be for love, life or for your fellow human being. Ralph Fiennes plays Michael Berg, a German lawyer who recalls the short love affair he had in his youth with Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet). The affair had a profound impact on his personal life and subsequent relationships to the point where he never forgot about her, even after the heart break of when she suddenly disappeared from his life. Years later, as a law student, Berg comes across her again, but this time he witnesses her on trial for Nazi war crimes when she worked as an SS Prison Guard in a concentration camp. Schmitz allows herself to be setup and imprisoned for life by the other defendants, rather than admit to her illiteracy, a fact which would have worked heavily in her favour as the evidence convicting her was a written prison report. Berg knows this but does not come forward. Berg never really moves on with his life, and eventually starts sending her audio tapes of himself reading books to her as he used to do in his youth. Schmitz begins to see the positivity of the situation in prison, but when Berg eventually goes to meet her, the reunion is not as warm as she hoped. Before she is released, Schmitz hangs herself, leaving Berg to contemplate the meaning of everything that has transpired. The film has the potential for strong emotional and thematic resonance, least of which being the stellar cast in Fiennes, Winslet and David Kross (who plays the young Berg). There is a sense in the film that life does not have easy answers; it is not easy to do the right thing because it requires an enormous amount of courage and/or sacrifice. In this respect, “The Reader” has some noble intentions and some cerebral engagement.

THE BAD: “The Reader” suffers from a very dull execution from director Stephen Daldry. The themes and plot of this movie are very strong emotionally, yet at no point throughout the film are those emotions driven home through the characters. You get your obligatory scenes of tears and thoughtful retrospection, particularly by David Kross and Ralph Fiennes in performing the role of Michael Berg, but there is nothing here that will move you. Melding their touching love story with another big emotional and overwhelming plot in the Nazi war crime trial is also a mistake, largely due to the fact that this story pulls you in to another direction entirely with its meanings of genocide and death. It is hard to feel empathy for a Nazi prison guard, despite her involvement and lack of understanding and sacrifice to help the prisoners more under her care, or with her connection to Berg. One gets the feeling that all of this works much better in the novel this film is based on. A novel can cover so much ground in the details that this story requires. “The Reader” unfortunately cannot hope to execute this faithfully, but even so, a better effort could have been made to do this with this film.

RATING: 5/10

Todd Murphy <br />
http://www.allaboutmovies.net

The Reader

It’s a bit surprising that despite having a script with bland dialogue, a subpar performance from one of its main actors and a patronising director, THE READER is a decent film. Sadly, it’s one of those films with a premise that could have resulted in a much better movie. But screenwriter David Hare wasn’t inspired, as evidenced by the very first dialogue exchange in the film:

“You didn’t wake me.”

“You were sleeping.”

… wow.

Germany, the fifties. Young Michael Berg (David Kross) feels sick in the middle of the street and is helped by an older woman, Hanna (Kate Winslet), whom he finds extremely pretty. After he recovers, he goes back to visit her and an affair begins, and ends abruptly, as she leaves without any warning. Years later, Berg, now a law student, crosses paths with his loved one again — as she, a former member of the SS, defends herself in a war-crimes trial, to Berg’s utter surprise, since he didn’t know of her past. We also see middle-aged Berg (played by Ralph Fiennes) as he deals with the emotional scars of his involvement with a former nazi, and the guilt he suffers from certain actions he took.

Both David Hare and director Stephen Daldry seemed to believe the audience would need a bit of a mystery to keep us interested in the film, which is where the main flaw of THE READER resides. Hanna has a secret (one not revealed in the synopsis) which the film makes painfully obvious — and it’s preposterous that Berg only realizes this after a long time.  The scene where Berg and Hanna are ordering food clears any doubts, and this seemingly wasn’t the filmmakers’ intention, since when the secret is officially “revealed”, Daldry adds several flashbacks showing us the clues he gave us as if we were expected to let our jaws drop at this amazing twist that became obvious twenty minutes ago.

The affair between Berg and Hanna is, however, interesting to watch, and the credit goes to Kate Winslet for her hypnotizing performance, since actor David Kross and Hare’s dialogue are no help. Frigid and bossy, Winslet’s character tends to have sudden mood changes, and even the warmest smile can become a hateful scowl if the wrong thing is said. Utterly convincing, the actress is one of the main reasons THE READER isn’t an instantly forgettable drama.

But David Kross, as young Michael Berg, is very limited, offering a merely passable performance. Whenever he needs to express a strong emotion, he resorts to a blank stare (so the audience will project whatever emotion we think fit over the empty canvas that is his face) or overdone body gestures (the way he repeatedly bows down, lowering his head and leaning on his knees, as he listens to Hanna during the war-crimes trial). Inexpressive for most of the film, Kross is also entirely unconvincing as a younger Ralph Fiennes, which obviously isn’t the actors’ fault, but the director’s for casting two physically distinct people to play the same character.

Fiennes, always talented and way more experienced than the young Kross, does a good job as the middle-aged Berg — and while Kross’ constantly vacant stare seems more appropriate for a retarded person, the expression Fiennes wears as Berg is a more convincing portrayal of introspective, quiet behaviour. Fiennes also protagonizes one of the strongest scenes in THE READER, when someone reads a letter to him and, after hearing the last sentence, he bursts into tears.

Also worthy of note is Professor Rohl, because he’s played by the brilliant Bruno Ganz, whose magnificent portrayal of Adolf Hitler in “Downfall” I will never, ever forget (and even if I did, another “Downfall” spoof on YouTube would remind me).

With its bland dialogue (“I can’t live without you. The thought of leaving you kills me. Do you love me?”), THE READER is saved by its relatively fast pacing. Scenes go by quickly, with short exchanges, and the plot is always moving forward. The love affair between Berg and Hanna manages to be emotionally successful up to a point. Daldry made the right decision in showing both actors naked next to one another constantly, in a strong portrayal of intimacy.

The superb cinematography by Roger Deakins and Chris Menges tends to film Hanna in cold tones — her apartment, however, seems warm, a subtle way to show how Berg feels inside it — much more at home and alive than he would be in his actual home. The red, translucent bath curtains are a particularly great touch, since they cast an orange glow over the couple as they take baths together. There is a certain moment when Berg, as a law student, talks to a colleague before taking her to bed — a quick scene shot in warm lights. However, when they are actually having sex, the movie goes back to the cold tones, as Berg misses his former lover. And the scene in which he visits a concentration camp is beautifully photographed, despite being pointless.

Despite its technical qualities, some interesting moral questions raised by the plot and Winslet’s amazing performance, THE READER is reduced to a some times interesting, but ultimately average drama by its many other shortcomings.

And I think THE READER is a bit of a dull title. But I guess it was that or I FUCKED A NAZI.

Originally written by André Navarro on January 18th 2010

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http://andrenavarro.wordpress.com/

Last updated: 2010-01-17 22:33:53 by andre_navarro

The Reader

Last updated: 2010-01-17 21:31:25 by malikaziz

The Reader

Holy crap. I’ve had the hots for Kate Winslet for for as long as ive known that was her name. Shes just so beautiful. Its her round face and cheeks and pale fair skin. And those huge eyes. Plus I just like women that look more like out of a renascence painting then little sticks of noodle with no shape to them. Now that ive cleared that up, i have to confess that the idea of being seduced at age 16 by Kate Winslet, was to say the least… quite arousing. As a matter of fact the first 30 minutes of this film were the most erotic moments ive ever seen her in… just hot. I did wonder what in god’s name did all of this sex have to do with the plot of this movie?. Well, it’s the foundation of the whole film, i was so shocked by it that i neglected to realize the story unfolding behind it.  Ofcourse i cant and will not tell you more than that. Just watch it. Because those first 30 minutes of sexual content make you the bearer of a secret that lasts the entire film. This movie swung me thru a HUGE spectre of emotion, from the inevitable arousal at the beginning, to shock, pity, hate, confusion, awkwardness, sadness and other things we have not invented words for yet. This movie was not at all what i expected. Expectations that were spoiler free (thank god) . Its 12:05 am and i think ive been in a journey of more than 20 years in time, in literature and in the horrible things people are capable of doing for job and for duty.  Kate Winslet´s performance was amazing. She could have not said a whole word in the entire film and still delivered the same emotion through her eyes. I am biased because i think she is one of the most beautiful women in the world. But after watching this film i think she is one of the worlds most gifted actresses. Devoted, selfless and so inspiring.
Ralph Fines was amazing as well. He really turned into this whole different person, mannerisms and everything. Which in my mind is a trait of a gifted actor. A person who, thru some sort of schizophrenia- esque technique, becomes another person, beyond just line reading. As far as what to expect from this movie?… expect nothing. You will enjoy it more. Well maybe an erection at the beginning if you fancy the pale British Winslet types like I do. But then try to remember how turned on you were, or at least the atmosphere of that intense sexual situation through the rest of the film. It will prove to be a very crazy rollercoaster of emotion. This movie was great, but i don’t think at 2 hours plus i would be able to see it again. The subject matter si way to difficult and sad. But the photography, story, acting, and ending are just wonderful. I’m so glad I watched this film and i recommended it to the open-minded patient film viewer who settles for nothing but top-notch performances and very elaborated plots. At one point i thought it was a soppy drama but it’s not. Well in my opinion it isn’t.
Oh yeah and I am reading the The Odyssey right now so it also hit that nerve.



http://peterwaffles.wordpress.com/

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Peter B. Waffles