Apr 14 2009
Don’t Rent It: The Reader
Netflix It (if you dare)
I’m a big Kate Winslet fan. I’ll see pretty much anything she’s in, secure in the truth that even if the movie is total crap (which, thankfully, it usually isn’t), I’ll have seen a stellar performance. And thus, I ended up in a theater in December to see The Reader, a film I was not terribly excited about, but I was at least ready to give it a sporting shot. I’m sorry to report that my instincts were accurate.
This movie is not good. And it’s not only not good in that it’s-so-obvious-they’re-just-courting-Oscar kind of way. It’s just NOT GOOD. In fact, I’m struggling to recall the last film I saw that was as devoid of emotion as this one. I mean, it’s a really dramatic concept, but the narrative surrounds two characters that are cagey and unemotional through most of the movie. It’s a total waste of the phenomenal talents of Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. Instead, the emotional weight of the film rests on the shoulders of young David Kross, who was 17 when they began filming the movie, and it proves too great of a burden for him to carry.
The plot of The Reader follows a torrid affair between a teenage boy, Michael (Kross), and a middle-aged woman, Hanna (Winslet). They meet when she finds him vomiting outside her apartment building and she helps clean his puke up and get him home. It’s all passion from there. The love-making scenes (which required the filmmakers to wait for Kross to turn 18 before shooting) are very vivid and, as with many other roles of hers, Winslet unabashedly bares all. As part of their foreplay, the “kid” (as she calls him) reads books to her, which we get to see cinematic montage form. Eventually, the affair ends. Several years later, when Michael is studying law at university, he is observing a war crimes trial for a course and is shocked to find that Hanna is one of the defendants. It seems she was a guard for the German SS. *I may get a wee bit more spoilery here than you’d prefer, just an FYI. There’s a spoiler clear after the next paragraph.* During that time, she and her fellow defendants were looking after a group of Jewish women that were being held prisoner by the Nazis. One night, when they were bunking in an abandoned church, lightening struck the building, setting it on fire and Hanna and her fellow guards locked the church, causing most of the women to burn alive.
In addition to the film’s lack of emotion, the other major issue I have with it is that it can’t seem to decide how it feels about Hanna’s transgressions. At some points it seems to excuse them by showing that she was cleary a woman trapped into her circumstances by her lack of intelligence. Hanna is illiterate (obviously), which limits the types of jobs she can take and when it comes to the jobs she does take, she excels at them because she’s really good at following orders and not questioning them. When speaking in her defense at the trial she simply states that had they let the prisoners out of the burning church, they would have been running free and, therefore, she and the others would have failed at their job as guards. While I can understand having a certain amount of sympathy for Hanna that she was not killing these women maliciously, it does not excuse the face that she’s responsible for the deaths of those women and not being able to read doesn’t mean that you don’t know that people dying is bad. The fact that the film attempts to excuse it all is a little frustrating. However, it also judges her for it at times. It just can’t seem to decide. You could argue that the filmmakers want you to decide for yourself whether Hanna should be forgiven, but as the architects of this story, I maintain that they, themselves, have to decide and I don’t think they ever do. They waffle between the two positions throughout the duration of the movie, causing it to be a thematic mess.
*No more spoilers after this point.*
I’ve heard many people who I like and respect say that they really enjoyed this movie and I just don’t get it. There is no driving motivation in this film. There is no main character to identify with. The whole thing is wretchedly hollow. It disappoints me greatly that, with the Oscar win, this is the film that will be marked down in history as the best performance from Winslet, an actress who as blown the lid off of countless films, including this year’s Revolutionary Road. I couldn’t help but feel like she was acting this entire movie with one hand held behind her back. She does a fine job with what she’s given, but what she is given is so very little. And don’t even get me started on Fiennes’s character; if Winslet’s given little to work with, Fiennes is working on pure vapor.
I know many will be tempted to check this film out because of the Oscar attention it received, but there’s nothing Oscar-worthy about this film outside of the age makeup. Watch it at your own risk.
And with that, I leave you with Winslet’s prophetic guest-starring turn in the show Extras:
