For some people, there is no more power experience than first love. For others, the past is shrouded in secrecy and shame. Set in post-Nazi Germany, The Reader is an intense investigation of how humans relate to each other, to society, and to society’s morals.
Academy Award winner Kate Winselt plays Hanna Schmitz, a compassionate, hard-working woman who lives a solitary life. David Kross plays the young Michael Berg, who nearly collapses on the train ride home from school. When Schmitz helps him, she sets off a chain of events that will affect Berg’s life forever. Ralph Fiennes plays the adult Berg, who grapples with his own solitude vis-à-vis his adult daughter and Hanna.
Winselt is really, really creepy sometimes, and at other times, she forces you to empathize with her experiences. Fiennes is distant, yet seething with that inner intensity. Kross is innocent, yet he grows into a lawyer with a questionable ethical center.
There is such a depth to this movie—an intensity that I didn’t see coming. The first part of the film involves a lot of nudity, sex, and, of course, reading. It didn’t really prepare me for the second half, where we learn a secret that I simply can’t give away. Personally, I could have lived quite contentedly without seeing Winslet nude, but what happens after all the sex softens the blow. The film raises a myriad of moral questions: such as, if someone is punished for a heinous crime, even if that person is innocent (or innocent-ish), does the punishment equal justice? Who is responsible when the whole world is going mad? Is someone who knows a secret that could change the outcome of “justice” culpable if he doesn’t reveal it? How much of yourself can you reveal to someone? How much should you?
Special features on the DVD include a piece-by-piece documentary on the aging of Hanna Schmitz, in which we see each prosthetic applied to Winslet’s face, neck, and arms to transform her into a 70-year-old woman. (Strange, but amazing. In all honesty, I didn’t even recognize “old” Winselt in the film.) In addition, there are featurettes on adapting the internationally best-selling novel to a screenplay, conversations with the young male lead David Kross and the director Stephen Daldry, and the composer Nico Muhly.
The Reader is an interesting film, well told. There’s a good bit to digest in this intimate look at a reader.
Reviewed by Adrin Fisher
