Review

Review Date: 3-January-09
Spoiler Rating: High
Juju Judgment: Juicy

The Reader (2008)

Last week I wrote that Valkyrie provided relief by showing actions that could easily be accepted as moral in Nazi Germany. The Reader is a very different kind of film. It covers uncomfortable territory around the Holocaust and its aftermath, extending outside the context of history into the larger realm of humanity where little adheres to strict concepts of right or wrong. This is a movie that might evoke passionate discussion or lingering contemplation.

The way I read it, it starts with the fact that human existence is a cascade of pain, cruelty, and confusion (and joy and goodness, I suppose, although these are not studied here). A child is hurt, grows up to hurt others, and keeps a cycle going that can define a sizable chunk of the world. That is essentially what happens with Hanna (Kate Winslet), whose childhood is a mystery but clearly involved poverty and a lack of education. At the beginning of The Reader she meets the teenaged Michael (a promising David Kross) in post-war Berlin and takes him as a lover despite being 20 years his senior. She is not the romantic type and seems devoid of any imagination which might brighten her dingy life. But in addition to sex with an innocent, one thing does inspire her: listening to people read aloud. Over the course of a summer Michael falls head over heels for Hanna, reading to her and weathering her black moods until the day she walks out of his life.

A premature affair like that might prove damaging in any case, but with Michael it dictates his future. As a young man in law school he attends the trial of six women accused of war crimes and discovers Hanna among them. He had never learned anything about her past and now hears that she worked as a guard at a concentration camp where she singled out people to read to her before sending them to the gas chamber. What is he supposed to feel? He still loves her and considers interceding for her case when the opportunity arises, yet he understands the classmate who argues that she should be shot even though she is a scapegoat for a nation overflowing with guilt.

As an older man (and played by Ralph Fiennes), Michael is a divorced loner who finds it hard to get close to others, even the daughter whom he loves. On impulse, he opens a channel of communication with Hanna, who is finishing out her life in prison. Their renewed acquaintance is a boon to each and introduces hope to the movie on a large and small scale. The key to closing the wounds left by the Holocaust, at least from a German perspective, is compassion. As Michael's college professor says, why did so many suffer if nobody is going to learn from it? As with individuals, the cruelty of a society can cascade down and perpetuate itself, but yielding to the instinct of compassion can interrupt the cycle. The Reader delivers the difficult message that the Nazis would have accomplished some of their goals if what they did embittered the next generation beyond the capacity for kindness. Michael does not forgive Hanna, nor does she ask for forgiveness. But in regarding her as a person, he can relate to her in a way that heals them both.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.