The Reader - Released 02/01/2009
The Reader, upon its release way back in 2009, was one of those films that I saw trailers for, desperately wanted to see and never got round to. Maybe it was my lack of friends willing to endure it for me, and maybe it was that I just got too busy or too poor to be able to go. Either way, it slipped off my radar until, on a whim, I bought a copy on DVD recently and made myself take time out of my increasingly hectic schedule to sit and watch it and pay attention without wandering off to do other things.
I was expecting a slushy romantic period drama. Or at least some sort of tragic love story. Based on the novel by Bernhard Schlink (which I still haven’t read and now desperately want to), The Reader starts off exactly as I expected. I’m not one to synopsise as I don’t want to ruin the intricacies of the plot for people who haven’t seen it yet; so very briefly and very generally:
Set in post World War 2 Germany, two people meet: Hanna Schmitz, and Michael Berg, who is by far her junior. I’d say she is probably just about old enough to be his mother. They begin an only slightly inappropriate love affair which mainly involves their having copious sex and Michael reading to Hanna, but it is a short-lived fling. Hanna leaves and Michael grows up and goes to law school. This is where The Reader departed entirely from my expectations. Michael next encounters Hanna when she is placed on trial for war crimes and the murder of 300 Auschwitz Jews. Michael, as a law student, has been taken by his tutors to observe the proceedings. Hanna is found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Over the course of her detainment, Michael sends her recordings of himself reading books to her; books he used to read to her when they were lovers. Through these recordings, Hanna teaches herself to read and write, and Michael, through his discoveries about her, learns an important secret that could call her guilt into question.
The moral dilemmas at play in a war crimes trial are cleverly brought to the forefront of the audiences’ attention and I found myself musing philosophically about them for a little while afterwards. Should individuals be condemned for committing crimes on the instructions of others (in this case on Hitler’s jurisdiction), and in fear of their own lives? Or should they too be considered as victims of a regime? Of course it all depends on circumstantial evidence, as it does in the case of The Reader, but in general I would say that no, individuals cannot be condemned for committing crimes when doing so defends their own existence.
Instead of reaching a white-knuckle ride of a climax where Michael discovers the truth in a flurry of excitement, The Reader arrives at a peaceful resolution well-suited to the evenly flowing pace of the rest of the film. The casting is equally serene; Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes are both brilliantly credible in their roles and David Kross, who plays the younger Michael, is vibrant, youthful and generally superb. It is almost a shame that none of the vivacity Kross lends to the younger Michael translates into Fiennes’ portrayal of the older man, and I suppose that here is where reading the novel would be useful to fill in the gaps and find out why the older Michael has lost all his youthful vigour.
This is not a love story. At least, not of the kind that one normally expects. It is more a story of tenderness, contentious morality and reconciliation, and is presented as a beautiful piece of drama.
