The Reader

I admire greatly the work of Stephen Daldry. As far as I can tell, he is the only director to be nominated for Academy Awards for both of his first two pictures (Billy Elliot and The Hours). He is not an auteur, but instead a craftsman who takes the story and gives it a precision and elegance that I find kind of thrilling. That is on display in his third picture, The Reader, but this time the material isn't quite up to snuff.

Michael Berg (played by David Kross as a young man and Ralph Fiennes as an older man) is a fifteen-year-old boy in Berlin. When he is stricken by illness while walking home one day in a rainstorm he is assisted by a woman about twenty years his senior (Kate Winslet). The two eventually have a very passionate affair, and the first third or so of the film could be mistaken for one of those things one can see on the Playboy Channel, as there is hardly a square inch of Winslet's flesh that isn't on display (or Kross either, for that matter). The whole thing reminds me of one of those letters to Penthouse magazine that begin, "I never thought something like this could happen to me..." In between the sex Winslet enjoys having Michael read to her, whether it is the classics or comic books.

The affair comes to an end, and Michael goes on to law school. A professor takes his students on a field trip to a trial of six women who were guards at Auschwitz. Michael discovers, to his horror, that Winslet is one of the defendants. He is torn up about this, but shares his relationship with her to no one. Then he realizes he has information which could help her, but he withholds it (as does Winslet, who does not use it to save herself).

So what we have here is a film about character withholding information, which doesn't exactly lend itself to dynamic cinema. It does allow for nuanced acting, as the performers are frequently called upon to stare into the distance, making us guess how they are feeling. Winslet, in particular, gives a problematic performance. She is a woman who has an affair with a fifteen-year-old boy and was a guard at Auschwitz, which suggests some complexity. But she is not the focus of the film, instead it is the character of Michael, and his action (or more accurately inaction) is often frustratingly vague.

The film is also about guilt, most specifically the collective guilt of the German people in the generation following World War II. When Michael's law class discusses the trial, there is a student who represents the extreme--he thinks all those Nazis should be shot, and that everyone who was an adult during that period bears responsibility. Michael listens to this tirade silently, realizing that every Nazi has a story, and that bloody justice may not be the perfect answer. When asked why she took the job with the S.S., Winslet tells the judge, "I needed a job. What would you have done?" The judge has no answer.

This is a thought-provoking but grim film, and I definitely give it a thumbs up, but it didn't bowl me over.