I am writing this review on Oscar Nomination morning (although due to the fact that I refuse to post a review until the DVD has dropped you will be reading this grand later) mostly due to my elation that it has been nominated for not only the worthy performance by Kate Winslet (in the moral category mind you) but also for Best Represent, Best Director and Adapted Screenplay. I’ve been chomping at the bit to write this review ever since I walked out of the theater a few weeks benefit, and since then I’ve seen the film a recount three times and I would glimpse it again accurate now if I could. I’ve pondered this film, discussed this film, relived this film and can honestly stamp it the best film of the year and quite possibly one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time.
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Sure, you can be speedy to pinpoint it’s supposed faults, and you can try and heed it something that it is not, but if you allow your eyes to begin and your mind to fill you may be able to survey this for what it really is; a masterpiece.
When sitting down to write this review I asked my friend how I was going to be able to do so without being redundant or irritating. I mean, how many different ways can you say masterpiece before someone says “I score the point, now recede on”? I’m going to try and regain all that out of the plan accurate now so that my review will be enjoyable.
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`The Reader’ is a masterpiece.
Okay, I’m done now.
Having read Bernhard Schlink’s lovely current I was really anticipating this film. I feel that Kate Winslet is the finest working actress today and this unprejudiced seemed like such an ideal role for her (Oscar, if you pass her over this year I bid to never gawk another telecast) . I of course try and shrug off all `high expectations’, and thankfully with `The Reader’ there was no hype. It hasn’t been hailed as the best of anything, and while it has landed on a few top ten lists it rarely breaks end to the top. The reviews have been mixed, some raving it as a masterpiece, some labeling it a faux; an imitation of a more insightful film. The only awards the film has garnered up until the point have been for Winslet so walking into the film, I was not feeding into hype.
I was simply hoping to peer a qualified movie.
The film tells the sage of Michael Berg, a young fifteen year ancient boy living in Post-WWII Germany. One day while making his intention home he falls ill and is helped assist by an older woman named Hanna. After waiting out his illness he attempts to thank Hanna but he winds up falling into a steamy affair. The two bond over books, using reading as a make of foreplay, and the two become almost inseparable. Then for no apparent reason Hanna leaves town without a word and Michael is left wondering why his only like has left him. Years later while Michael is attending law school he gets the opportunity to sit in on a trial being held over war crimes and is shrinking, and ultimately heartbroken, to behold Hanna is one of the accused.
First and foremost it should be addressed that this is not your typical Holocaust film, for quite frankly the Holocaust is the least impressionable share of this film. The film, like the fresh, deals strongly with the feelings of guilt and redemption. There is a good play that runs throughout each scene that begs the audience to cast judgment, but not in an absolute diagram but in a more complex and idea contrivance. `The Reader’ has no easy answers, but it throws at the audience a bit of a conundrum. It reminds me very distinguished of `Dead Man Walking’, a film that appears to have such an easy reply yet causes you to rip apart your hold ideals.
I am keeping SPOILERS to a minimum here, but be forewarned that there may be a few.
When we meet Michael and Hanna they seem like an queer match. He is obviously better off financially than she is. He is attending school and is doing rather well. Hanna is working a tedious destroy job and living in a diminutive apartment. Her education is runt but her yearning for more is apparent. There is an attraction physically, which cannot be denied. While Hanna is rough due to the nature of her life she is a diamond in the rough, a graceful woman trapped within the shell of her weak life. Michael is young and coming into his own; a radiant boy with a head on his shoulders.
There’s innocence within him that Hanna desires.
Their relationship is very quick and very graphic, but there is a sincerity there that one needs to truly view for. Some have complained that the relationship was pure surface; nothing but lust. They are missing something crucial. `The Reader’ is a film filled with unruffled moments that state volumes about the characters. There is a deeper connection between these two souls, one that maybe they can’t even behold. There is a moment where Hanna finds herself inside a diminutive church listening to a young choir and the tears are streaming down her face, and as Michael watches her from the doorway we can gaze it; even if he or even she doesn’t truly understand it.
It is there.
As the film progresses and the two are separated we launch to truly observe the deeper connection that they are feeling for the first time. As the trial proceeds Michael is caught between his bear feelings of apt and wrong; between what is ethical and what is not. He is shrinking by the revelations concerning his traditional love; distraught over what this means for him and whether or not it had anything to do with his personal attachment to this woman.
Can he bring himself to dislike her? Can he bring himself to forgive her? Does she deserve that hatred or that forgiveness?
There is a moment when Michael is attempting to visit Hanna in prison when everything makes sense; his eyes swelling with an emotion he has yet to fully realize. He struggles to convince himself that he hates this woman, because hating her would perform it easier to forget her.
`The Reader’ is a masterfully crafted chronicle of treasure and loss; of what we mutter ourselves in order to better understand something we haven’t the capacity to engage. There is the shame in Hanna’s eyes as she hides her secret (one that you no doubt had guessed long before it was revealed, but the revealing of the secret is not really the point of the account), willing to sacrifice her very life so as not to be downgraded or looked down on. There is the guilt in Michael’s eyes as he blames himself for Hanna’s fate, unable to step outside his skin long enough to determine the moral course to case. This is a account about mistakes and missteps and regrets and the ultimate loss that comes from not fully concept how to feel.
Technically, this is a flawless film. I remember reviewing `…Jesse James…’ last year (this plot aloof won’t let me type in that fat name) and going on and on about how technically perfect it was, from the cinematography to the acquire to the lighting to the mood to honest about everything. `The Reader’ is the genuine opposite in scope yet unprejudiced as profound. It is a powerful subtler film, and so the get, the lighting, the cinematography and the status designs are smaller, yet fair as pristine. Everything is so crisp and delicate; adding layers to the mood perfectly presented by director Stephen Daldry. I was a runt hesitant about Daldry’s ability to transfer Schlink’s new to the great mask. I loved `Billy Elliott’ and continue to fancy it more and more every time I ogle it, but Daldry’s latest grief was that 2002 debacle `The Hours’ and so I was truly shy that he was going to hasten the same gamut and vow a similar share.
`The Reader’ is not only mighty more profound and poignant, but it is also executed considerable better than `The Hours’ (to be handsome, I need to gape this movie again, but I was not impressed the first or second go around) .
When it all boils down to it though, this movie is all about two things; Kate Winslet and David Kross. Both actors vow career highs (and to say that about Winslet is saying a lot since she is always top notch) . Their performances are truly organic. That has become my original current word this year, for I feel as though it truly taps into the depth of these performances. There is a naturalness that fortifies itself within these performances, deepening with each flicker in the eyes or twitch under the skin. Try your hardest to see Winslet’s face (I know it’s hard, especially since she is without clothing for practically the whole first hour of the film) . There is a scene where she is lying in the bathtub and Kross comes in to hash out their argument. As he speaks you can peek for the first time her hard exterior melting away and revealing this woman that she doesn’t even know exists. It is so subtle yet so profound.
Winslet is announce perfection.
Kross is objective as kindly, sinking into his character and delving deep into his emotional responses to his recent plot. The scene in the courtroom (all of the courtroom scenes are beyond breathtaking) when he notices Hanna for the first time is utterly immobilized. Behold as Kross exhibits such a natural gut reaction; as controlled as he can be yet giving plan to lapses of uncontrollability.
The supporting cast is also genuine, from Fiennes’ dynamic concept of Michael’s emotional regression to Bruno Ganz’s pick of the right spot at hand. The one standout here is truly Olin, who proves to be one of the most principal facets of the film. Her final scene with Fiennes is what makes the movie work, dispelling any easy sympathies for Hanna’s atrocities with her frosty standing. For anyone who has complained (and there have been many) that this film tries to condone the actions taken by Hanna I bustle you to rewatch and peek this scene, for in a few short words Hanna’s actions are condemned wholeheartedly.
Remember, it is not her actions that we are sympathizing with, it is her inner person; icy and rigged yet incomplete, pleading for something or someone to beget her feel whole.
Thanks in mammoth fragment to David Hare’s qualified adaptation, `The Reader’ lives up to its source material and delivers a truly outstanding and utterly wonderful gawk at this tragic yet delicate treasure record. If you coast away from `The Reader’ unmoved then maybe you are honest slow unmovable.
I’ll conclude by saying that the Oscar’s have passed, Kate won the gold (YES!!!) and I unruffled agree wholeheartedly with every word in this review.
This wasn’t really on my radar, until I started reading pleasurable reviews of it, and that, plus the fact of Kate Winslet, one of the few women I would unquestionably go straight for, conspired to send me off to the multiplex, where everyone else was billing and cooing over Marley & Me.
We have a brief snippet with Ralph Fiennes as this fellow Michael as an adult, then flash succor to 1958 Germany, where he suddenly becomes sick in a street. Gruff woman Hanna, Winslet completely convincing as a German woman, comes and helps him and takes him home. Turns out he has scarlet fever, and is laid up in bed for three months. When he’s better, he returns to her apartment to thank her. He visits again, and eventually the 16-year-old boy and the woman in her thirties are in a sexual relationship.
She provides his sexual education, and soon she asks him to bring things and read them to her. They consume many nice hours with him reading to her before or after sex. Michael grows to fancy her and is thrilled to have such an intriguing secret, but soon he finds that it interferes with him having normal friendships and girlfriends with people his have age, since he is always running off after school to be with Hanna.
Eventually the affair abruptly ends. Years pass, and Michael goes to law school. The class goes into the city to gawk a war crimes trial as a lesson, and Michael is surprised to inspect Hanna there–on trial. She joined the SS after their affair, as a nurse, and was in particular partially responsible for the burning deaths of a number of prisoners. Michael is very upset at the entire thing, but can’t really confide to his fellow students, and by this time has started to scrutinize that he has inconvenience forming deep relationships anyway.
SPOILERS > > >
Okay, serious spoilers, I’m not kidding! This fraction is better for people who have seen the movie. Michael tells his teacher that he has information that could affect the outcome of the trial… but he eventually declines to give it. Hanna is asked to provide a handwriting sample to explain that she wrote a statement about the atrocity. Rather than submit, she admits to the crime, and thus receives a far worse sentence than the others. The reason for both Michael and Hanna’s actions? Hanna can neither read nor write. Therefore Michael could have had her exonerated, or at least significantly reduced her sentence, but he chose not to. She, too, could have exonerated herself, but she chose not to admit that she is unable to read. The film continues and throws out a few more fair complications, but I deem this is the crux. < < < SPOILERS Extinguish
It strikes me as being about guilt and complicity. Michael has his chance to back Hanna, but now he has seen that his affair perhaps wasn’t the best thing for him in the long urge, and left him with several emotional issues. So he takes his revenge–by refusing to wait on her, and helping her in only very little, grudging ways later–and ways that could be considered as making her a sort of prisoner to him or someone deeply in his debt and control. Hanna seems for long periods to have no true sense–and to harshly dismiss anyone who makes claims to one–but there’s an element of her self-punishment that goes beyond superficial shame to a feeling of deeper guilt, almost as though, through whatever formed her, she believes herself to be nasty and deserving of punishment.
So it all turns into a very literary right lesson on guilt and levels of complicity. One of those things that chooses a subject and examines it from all sides, providing several different examples and aspects toward creating a detailed whole describe. In this plan it’s a very literary film, as it’s about different aspects and shades of a thought, rather than an accumulation of events that eventually yelp a lesson or provide an insight.
All the performances are very apt. As I said, Winslet is completely convincing as a gruff German woman, and the role requires her to age to about seventy. She also makes a convincing veteran woman, although my only complaint is that, as an elderly woman, she collected moves impartial as speedy as her younger self. David Kross as young Michael conveys the innocent excitement and sense of specialness of being in this unconventional affair, and of course Ralph Fiennes is perfect as always. The direction [by Billy Eliot and The Hours director Stephen Daldry] is effective if undistinguished, using short dinky shots at times to scream a character’s worried mind, without having to compose another scene unbiased to reveal it.
Overall, an lively film with ample performances that offers a lot to believe about more than anything. An examination of the various aspects and shades of guilt and complicity as it relates to a sure interrelated circles of right problem. A thoughtful tiny movie you won’t regret seeing.
