The Reader [DVD]

This is one of the finest narratives I have encountered on the subject of the holocaust. It reveals that this horrid period in history was a tragedy for the Germans as well as the Jews. It also reveals that the Nazis were human beings, despite their inhumane atrocities. Of course, there were monsters like Hitler, Mengele and Goebbels, but there were also many ordinary German people who were swept up in the cultural and political tidal wave of the Nazi movement. We would all like to think that we would have acted differently but human beings are social and are, therefore, influenced by the actions of those around them. A sort of behavioral relativism. If my mother and father had been active in the party and I had been enrolled in Nazi youth, would I have ended up going along with the trend? I hope not.It is odd and even difficult to think of the Germans as suffering but the proof is threaded through the historical accounts of the time. Living with torture and death takes an enormous toll, whether you are a victim or a perpetrator. If you lived through one of the camps on either side and had even an ounce of humanity, I suspect you were changed forevermore.

Ralph Fiennes plays Michael Berg, a lawyer in Germany in 1995, when this film is originally set. The rest of the film is primarily told in flashbacks, as Michael reflects on his involvement with an woman named Hannah (played by Kate Winslet), which began when he was just 15 years old. Michael had come down with a sever illness on day, while out on the street, and collapsed. Hannah, who is already an adult, happened to come across him, and helped him get home. When Michael got better, he tracked down Hannah so he could give her some flowers, as a way of thanking him, and Michael is immediately attracted to her. The 2nd time they met, Hannah takes notice of Michael's attraction, and rather suddenly seduces him. Over the next several weeks, the two lovers meet in secret, @ Hannah's apartment, after she's gotten home from work and he's got out of school, to have sex. Hannah soon makes what seems like an odd request to Michael, she want him to read to her some of the books that he's studying in school. She says she enjoys hearing his voice, and the way he reads. And so that is how their affair progresses, they'd have sex, and then lie in bed (or in the bathtub) while Michael reads aloud to Hannah.What I find most interesting about how this relationship is portrayed, is that there's almost an abusive element to it, on the part of Hannah. Michael (brilliantly portrayed as a teenager by David Cross), is a naïve wide-eyed innocent, who clearly develops deep feelings for Hannah. While Hannah is show @ times to be dismissive of Michael, and be demanding of him, and mocks his youth. That, missed with the tenderness of the love scenes, creates a very strange dynamic between these two.Then Hannah abruptly moves away, after receiving a job promotion, without even telling Michael or saying goodbye. Michael is, of course, devastated. Then the film switches to 6 years later, where Michael is in law school. His professor takes him and some of his fellow students to observe a trial where three women are charged with war crimes, for being Nazi prison guards @ a women's concentration camp, where they were responsible for allowing some of the prisons to die in a fire. Michael is shocked to discover that Hannah was one of the guards, although he attempts to hide the fact that he knows her from his professor and fellow students, and the other two women put the blame for the fire entirely on her. While studying the evidence and facts of the trial, Michael discovers Hannah's secret, which is that she is illiterate. That's why she had Michael read books to her, because she couldn't read them herself. This info could actually help her during the trial, but she refuses to admit it, because she's too embarrassed, and is therefor sentenced to life in prison.Over the years, Michael sends tape records that he makes of himself reading various books to Hannah in prison, but he never goes to visit her in person. Eventually, Hannah uses Michael's tapes to teach herself how to read. And then 22 years later she is due to be paroled. Michael finally goes to see her in prison, but their meeting is strained, as Michael can't quite reconcile the horrible actions she committed during the war. He does end up agreeing to help her find a job and a place to stay when she gets out of jail, but then when he goes to pick her up on the day of her released, he discovered that she committed suicide the day before. We then switch back to the modern day (1995) where Michael is telling this story to his young daughter.I enjoyed this film both the complexity of the relationship between Hannah and Michael, as well as for scenes between Michael and the other law students during the trial. It's made clear that these kids are the first generation in Germany to come after WWII, and have grown up in the shadow of the atrocities that were committed by the generation that preceded them, and have struggled to come to terms with that. I also must say that while Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes were rightly praised by the critics for their performances, I feel that David Cross has been greatly overlooked. His portrayal as young Michael, going from age 15-22 is spot-on, and I think he's the real star of the film.And least I forget another great feature of this movie, and the reason why I own it on DVD: Kate Winslet gets naked. Completely naked. A LOT.

Second or third time I have watched this movie. The beginning, it's okay but the story intensifies as the movie develops. Kate Winslet is marvelous, especially in the trial and in the prison. That's all I will say; watch it if you so desire.

If I didn't like this movie, I would have titled my review "Summer of My Nazi War Criminal Lover" but I did like it...largely because of Kate Winslet. She really can disappear into a character. In this movie, you just see Hanna Schmitz and not the incredibly talented actress playing her.***spoilers***The first aspect about the movie is the love story. It's done with great sensitivity and tenderness (and eroticism). I did not find it distasteful (although I'm a guy and the idea of being welcomed into a attractive older woman's bed at the age of 15 would have been the stuff of my dreams...at least when I was at that age...and besides David Cross looked older than 15). Also, the book points out that Hanna misjudged Michael's age (thinking him 17 and the age of consent laws in Germany don't outright ban contact between a 35 year old woman and 15 year old male anyway). I remember someone I knew who was in his late teens who was involved with a much older woman and while I thought that rather odd, it didn't come across as monstrous (although I admit I find the notion of any man in his mid-30s seducing a 15 year old girl appalling).The second aspect of the story is the question of Hanna's guilt for what she did in World War II. She was a guard at Auschwitz. On a weekly basis, she picked ten inmates there to be sent to the gas chamber in response to a standing requirement that she do so (some of them were women she gave preferential treatment to for a time while she had them read to her). She also was partially responsible for deaths of hundreds of women and children who died when the church that the SS women locked them in was hit by Allied bombers. These facts are indisputable, so she's evil and beyond redemption, right?But what would someone plunked from our safe secure perch in the early 21st century into Nazi Germany do in someone like Hanna's shoes? It's easy to say "I would never have joined the SS, and if I had, I wouldn't have served as a guard at Auschwitz. And I would have released those women and children in the church." But I wonder. We shouldn't be that surprised that a relatively unsophisticated, illiterate person living in a society like Nazi Germany where life was so cheap and obedience so prized behaved the way Hanna did (and besides joining the SS in late 1943 when a lot of Germans could clearly see the handwriting on the wall was not a shrewd or opportunistic move or the mark of an ardent Nazi!). There's a world of difference between someone like her (who was a child when the Third Reich took power) and someone like Rudolph Hoess, the first commandant of Auschwitz, who was an ardent Nazi and with Hitler almost from the very beginning.It's entirely plausible that someone like Hanna was --in a normal society where there is rule of law-- a "good" person, and she apparently was after the war. It's hardly wrong for the film to depict her as someone capable of love and tenderness. Many Nazis were thugs or sadists but Hanna was not (in fact the movie didn't even indicate she was a member of the Nazi Party or held anti-semitic views). She was just a little cog in an evil machine. Demanding that anyone who was part of that inhuman machine be depicted as someone with horns is simplistic.The character of Michael Berg is somewhat inexplicable, and this is why I am giving the film only four stars. He falls head over heels in love with Hanna as a youth. He's devastated by her departure from his life. He's heartbroken when he sees her in the dock on trial for war crimes. But he doesn't act to help her by revealing the fact she's illiterate and couldn't have written the report about the fire that damns her to a life sentence. Was he sparing her feelings, punishing her, or both? (if I had been in his shoes I would have revealed her secret to the court...She might have hated me for it, but she probably would have gotten to learn to read and write much earlier than she did and would have gotten out of jail much sooner). Frankly, I found Michael remaining silent bewildering (particularly when we see him crying when she gets a life sentence)...just like I found him recording all those books for her but never writing and actually communicating with her impossible to understand.There are a few more points to ponder here. First, it is striking how little we the readers wind up knowing about Hanna. Even at the end of the movie, she's still a cipher to both us and Michael. Even in what amounted to her last will and testament where one might have expected her to pour out her feelings to Michael and talk about what she did in the war, she doesn't (just saying "Tell Michael Berg I said hello.") I for one found myself wanting to know more about her and why she did what she did and why she --apparently impulsively-- became involved with Michael.Second, it was a mistake to have Winslet play Hanna as a woman in her mid-60s. No matter how good the make-up and how good an actress Winslet is, I didn't buy her as a prematurely aged woman. That's one reason why having her in prison less time would have worked better...because she was plausible as someone in her late 40s to early 50s but not much beyond that.Third, the movie and book seem to construe the incident where Hanna didn't let the prisoners out of the burning church as her greatest sin. But what would someone nowadays have been charged with in similar circumstances (let's say, a sheriff fails to release prisoners from a burning jail)? He'd be guilty of a crime of omission. He'd probably be found guilty of manslaughter or negligent homicide and not willful murder unless it could be proved that he set fire to the jail or announced that he was going to let those prisoners burn to death. A lot of people in such a situation would have gone into moral vapor lock and found it easier --at least at that moment-- to do nothing.And remember, she was just one of six guards. The other five could have acted to save those people as well but didn't. The book also makes it clear that there were soldiers present who had escorted the guards with their charges. They did nothing either. Moreover, there were villagers who did nothing as well. The guilt and responsibility for the incident was collective and involved many people. Singling out Hanna for exceptional punishment while others walked free or got token sentences wasn't fair and not in the interest of justice...and it wouldn't have brought anyone back from the dead.Yet another point to ponder: the story had Hanna serving about 18 or 19 years in prison. Albert Speer, the economic czar of the Third Reich, served twenty years of his life sentence before being released. The duration of those sentences would make one think that Speer and the fictional Hanna's crimes were roughly equivalent in magnitude...but as anyone knows, Speer's culpability and guilt was infinitely greater.Finally, I said to myself, "You don't like the ending of the book and movie. What sort of ending would have been satisfactory to you and possibly other people as well?" This is what I came up with***the following is an alternative ending that substantially changes events as depicted in the book and movie and those who are happy with the way it stands probably should not read it***A Better EndingPart I would not change. In Part II, Michael would visit Hanna in jail and express disbelief, anger, and dismay over both her past and her leaving him. Michael would still go through all the angst that he did in this point of the narrative, but when he realized Hanna was illiterate and it would be wrong for her to be assigned the lion's share of blame for the deaths at the church, he would go to the judge --despite her pleading with him not to-- and tell him that Hanna could not read or write and could not have written the report about the incident. As a result, Hanna would draw a ten year sentence along with the other women guards (instead of her getting a life sentence while the others got token ones).Now, Hanna's first reaction to Michael's "betrayal" of her secret would be shame and anger at him. We'd see her refusing to let him visit her. Michael would try to forget about her, getting married and even more quickly divorced. Michael would then start reading and recording books for Hanna and eventually she'd learn to read and write and when she started sending him letters...after some hesitation, he would start writing back to her (this correspondence would allow us to learn more about her character). One thing we would learn was that she became involved with Michael because he bore a strong resemblance to a young German soldier she grew up with and loved and who died in the war....We'd also see her develop insight and regret over what she did and failed to do in the war.Time would march on, and after the sixth year or so of her sentence, Michael would begin visiting her and around the eighth or ninth year of her sentence, Hanna would receive clemency and be released from prison. Michael would pick her up at the prison and when they were in the car together, she'd ask --much like he asked her long before-- "do you forgive me? and he'd nod imperceptibly and then "do you love me?" and he'd again nod. Later, we'd see them in bed together at his home and in another turn, Michael would have her read to him.I figure that we'd then flash forward until around 2004 or 2005 (and learn that Hanna had died of natural causes a year or so before) with Michael visiting the survivor of the fire and having much the same conversation with that woman that he did in the book and the movie, and we'd then see Michael visiting Hanna's grave and once again read to her.For me that would make a better ending. Hanna would still wind up being held to account but she and Michael would be together at the end...for others perhaps not, but that's one of the best things about fiction. It isn't real so there's no sin in saying, "No, it happened this way."