The Reader
Release: Now available on DVD
Duration: 124 minutes
Rating: MA (sex scenes and nudity)
Stephen Daldry’s fine new film, The Reader, may investigate the oft-told subject of the Holocaust, but it is more of a post-modern study into the legitimacy of World War Two fiction, rather than yet another Holocaust film. In 1958 Neustadt, sickly, sensitive adolescent Michael Berg (David Kross) begins an affair with beautiful tram conductor, Hanna (Kate Winslet). The film jumps ahead to two key points in Michael’s life; in 1966, he is a law student observing the trial of several female SS Guards and in a 1995, the haunted, distant Michael (now played by Ralph Fiennes) is the divorced father of an emotionally wounded daughter.
Like contemporaries Bennet Miller (Capote) and Florian Henkel Von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others), Daldry has the stylish, intellectual eye of a classicist, especially in his economic portrayal of a shamefaced German state. The film’s first third features scenes of extreme nudity, but Daldry (whose previous films include Billy Elliot and The Hours, as well as extensive work on the English stage) is a director of considerable intellect. He weaves a subtle, sensitive power over the film, deftly handling the delicate emotional arc of the story. Adapted from Bernhard Schlink’s novel, the story’s pain and anguish is heartfelt, reflecting upon a generation’s quandary as to whether they can ever really understand the inconceivable.
Michael attempts to condemn Hanna’s crimes, yet , he resolves to empathise with her. The film does not sentimentalise Hanna, but simply hopes to understand her, thus allowing Michael to reconcile the woman he knew with the former guard who stood accused for her War crimes.
Daldry understands there is no singular answer or “truth” to be ascertained from the past and recognises the hollowness of simple analysis in the face of such overwhelming evil. This point is well developed in the character of a concentration camp victim, Ilana Mather, who has since documented her experiences in an autobiography. A flawless Lena Olin plays the astute, principled writer; although she is not unsympathetic to Michael’s necessity to learn, she remains wary to any attempts to rationalise her experiences or those of her fellow victims ("Nothing came out of the camps. Nothing," she tells Michael flatly, trivialising his attempt for Hanna’s moral absolution).
There is something very powerful and devastating about the three central performances- each serves as a vital piece of a mystery that is not really a mystery, but a deeply absorbing, soulful study of guilt and post War judgment. Much has been said of the intelligent, remarkable work of Winslet, and she is good (as is Fiennes), but the film centres on the powerful performance from the young German actor Kross, whose expressive, soulful face superbly registers Michael’s transition from naïve affection to anguished reflection.
The Reader analyses the slight, but distinct historical distance between the Holocaust and the subsequent generation of Germans- but the filmmakers examines this weighty, tense material with artistry and taste. Like the recent Un Secret, the film conveys the futility of storytelling to explain the holocaust’s unfathomable evil for the children of war.
Andrew Moraitis
