In Theatres, 124 minutes, Rated R
Viewing The Reader is like touring Disney World with an ADD 8-year-old as guide, except that the attractions here are themes and sub-themes and the kid is director Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours). The film is a rarity this Oscar season: a movie that wants to say too much and on too many important topics. Looking for a movie that explores the effects on children of being sexualized too young? Got it. On-going German guilt on the holocaust? Check. The culpability of individuals following the laws of their own land while breaking so-called “higher laws”? Here. The legal systems ability or inability to mead-out justice? Gotcha. The ability of people to learn from the past? The culpability of the simple or uneducated? The possibility of redemption for deliberate transgressions? Forgiveness? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. The film is based on the book by Bernhard Schlink and screenwriter David Hare seems unable or unwilling to cut a single plot point or abandon an rabbit trail unexplored, leaving a convulated mess of a film that still, at times, manages to touch on the sublime.
Ralph Fiennes is the adult Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a 15-year-old (German Actor David Cross) in 1955, entered into a three-month affair with the 30-year-old German Hannah Schmitz, played with her usual deft touch by Kate Winslet. Her abrupt departure, without saying goodbye, leaves a aching vacuum in Berg he’ll never fill. That she left for reasons unrelated to him is beside the point since he never knows. Cut to seven years later. Berg is an up-and-coming law student who attends the trial of minor Nazi war criminals, only to see his beloved Hannah as a defendant. Her subsequent sentence sets the scene for the unsatisfying last third of the film as Berg wrestles with guilt and an inability to move past the affair to form meaningful, trusting relationships.
The acting is excellent throughout, although I wouldn’t have minded seeing a little more fire out of Fiennes. The cinematography is good if not spectacular, and Daldry’s study hand is seen through most of the film. Unfortunately, when you open up that many themes, bringing them all to any sort of conclusion is impossible. This may be a deliberate device by the filmmakers, preferring to leave the unresolved and potentially irresolvable in a permanent state of flux. But too many of the plot points seem too forced to go for realism (for instance, who would go to prison for 20 years to hide the fact that they’re illiterate, especially in a courtroom in which they knew no one?). This is a film that tried mightily but falls apart in the last third. Still, worth seeing. B-
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The Reader B-
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2 comments:
B+ for me. Our different reaction to the third act is what explains the difference. I was generally bored with the first act, was hooked by the second act, and felt the film register on an A level in the third act. Fiennes was perfect conveying the pain and agony felt by his character.
The film is an interesting role reversal study of a boy being taken advantage of sexually (she was 36) by a much older woman. I was really impacted by Fiennes' struggles and connections to Winslet.
I really enjoyed Bruno Ganz (Hitler in Downfall) as the law professor. One of my favorite scenes is the one where the seminar students argue fiercely regarding the trial and what it is accomplishing or not. The strongest theme for me was the arbitrary nature of law and punishment as it relates to popular culture (ie the book written by the survivor led to the trial). The smarmyness of the judge as he reads Winslet's sentence in particular brings this point home as he performs for the cameras.
The 'reveal' moment reveals that the plot of the film is fatally flawed - why would someone go to prison to protect a secret that is simply embarassing?
exactly. why would he or she? and if fiennes had come out with his "testimony", it wouldn't have mattered. he didn't know she couldn't read, he only suspected it. it would have been viewed as a last ditch effort to save her life. so, his guilt is unjustified and her decision is not plausable. i agree completely with the interesting role reversal and the impact that the relationship has on the fiennes being of great interest, and in hindsight this is probably a B for me, not B-. still, no where close to oscar caliber in my opinion.
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