The Reader, 2008

It’s amazing how guilt and love can equally ravage a person. The Reader is possibly the best Nazi-related film ever made, and could easily win Best Picture of the Year. Yes, it is that good. We meet Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) first, a lawyer in 1996 Berlin. He’s sifting through journals and books filled with yellowed pages. We’re taken into his memory of his time with his first love, Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), in West Germany, 1958. The Reader is masterfully presented and crafted by director Stephen Daldry and writer David Hare. Both earned Oscar nominations for this film. And of course Kate Winslet, whose acting is better than anything we’ve seen before, including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Titanic, and Little Children. She’s plays the role with care and precision, never revealing too much about Hanna at any given time. We believe the wild emotional swings from shortly after WWII when we meet her to the sense that she’s at peace during the trial after 20 years have past, and finally we believe the strain of the lifetime of guilt at the end. Five stars.

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This is a first-rate example of state-of-the-art mainstream moviemaking---much better than I anticipated. The first hour is particularly engrossing, with its lyrical presentation of the encounter between the young man and the mysterious woman. (The soft musical soundtrack is almost nonstop, but it is part of the enveloping mood.) The performances are outstanding by the leading pair. The second half is, if you will, post- adolescence, where adult/social/political complications of reality set in. It is all a bit familiar from then on (as was the first half, too, in its own way, but nicely done). At that point, the storyteller slyly inserts the name of "Sophie" as a girlfriend just then. (This is to recall and acknowledge "Sophie's Choice," I think---another story of an innocent young man confronting an older woman's encounter with evil in war. But since here he is German himself, the contact is more direct, intimate, too. The call and response of authors.) In this regard, I also find it acceptable history, in terms of how we look at and portray the horrific Nazi period. This movie, based, significantly, on a contemporary German novel, seems to me to represent how the youth of that modern country deal with the terrible story of their nation's history in WW2. Obviously they cannot excuse or forgive what is also an increasingly dim and remote period, but it is their country, and they live with their homeland and its history like with a sister and mother and lover---as does the boy with his first love. Young Germans of today do not choose their parents or their place of birth. In the long, long roll call of movies about the Holocaust (and it is about more than that, too) it represents to some degree at least a natural progression about time, forgetting, and all that which is immutable in the self(s) and in the nation(s). It is, thus, in no small measure about compromise---loving what is imperfect, for example. Very fine. 2.09

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Some of the most jaded, Hollywood-ruined human interest footage in the Dramatist category. It almost painstakingly points back to fine writers and allegorical storytellers in human history until we are left with no choice but to like this movie for fear it would make us look dumb. Let me stress, this movie hits all the high points for crafting fine drama, only like Chekov, it makes the Reader feel as trapped in their lives as the characters' do in theirs. Granted, this is a coming of age movie in both the Kid's and Hannah's stories. He comes of Age early in the film, and her only with the momentous galvanizing impulse that she will learn how to read. It is unfair for me to sum it up so shortly, but to have The ending (so important) hinge on the fact that Hannah the S.S. guard couldn't have written the report because *Eureka* she can't read!*Eureka,* and never could write. I would be kinder but Oscar keeps falling for this crap, *ahemMillion$baby, *crashetcecch. The boy is really good, and Fiennes is decent for such small screen time. Kate is actually a believable German, quite lovely and fuzzy, and completely a woman. For all the actresses who have appeared sans robe on screen, she wholly is committed to the bizarre frailty, respite honor, indomitable strength, unveiling romance, serene beauty, and outrageous fun that is all part of the female homosapien. A Woman is all these things, and she sure acts like it. Give it a few Oscars if you like, but this movie is the summation of tested and true Hollywood industry. Crisp 'tone' screen-writing with clean, neat circles. It seems so honest it'll probably fool you. I can't say that the book it is based off is the same as the movie. My guess is that if you're looking for earnesty, continue your search there.

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