"It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what I feel. The dead are still dead."
The annual end-of-year outpouring of awards-baiting dramas comes in two distinct flavours: low-def, gritty, achingly sincere miserablist indies, and high-toned, expensive, achingly serious miserablist studio fare. The Reader, Bernhard Schlink's long-awaited novel adaptation, falls firmly into the latter camp; everything about it is warmly lit and coldly calculated. Even the sex scenes are tastefully posed in ways that have more to do with an idealized portrait of passion than actual sex. People who know British cinema should expect no less from Stephen Daldry, who with his only two other films, The Hours and Billy Elliot, gave prestige-pic fans two other staid, swelling book adaptations suitable for framing.
But while The Reader could stand to be more lively and lived-in, it's nonetheless a supremely well-acted, gorgeously shot story that quietly dodges many of the common pitfalls of the Holocaust film. In particular, it has little to do with the vastness of the tragedy, and everything to do with the disjunctions between generations in all eras, not just momentous ones.
As with Schlink's fabulous novel, guilt is what drives The Reader to unsettling highs and lows of conduct. It's the essence behind both book and film, a picture that isn't easy to deconstruct at first glance. Daldry works the senses and emotions to build a striking sexually charged drama, taking specific interest in the interior of the characters and what compels them to swallow the anguish they obviously desire to expel.
In 1958, 15-year-old Michael (David Kross) is comforted by a stranger named Hanna (Kate Winslet) when he falls ill in the street. Months later, when returning to Hanna to thank her for her kindness, Michael finds himself attracted to the distant, older woman, and the two begin an affair defined by its passion and Hanna's insistence that Michael read her stories of all genres before lovemaking. When the relationship ends abruptly, Michael goes off to law school, finding himself eight years later at a Nazi war crimes trial where Hanna is one of the defendants. Racked with guilt, yet paralyzed to interfere, Michael's life is again consumed by Hanna, extending into an adulthood (now played by Ralph Fiennes) marked by relentless regret and shame.
The thing about The Reader - the reason why it has divided so many people, the way I see it - is that it sticks extremely close to its literary roots. For it to be loved and acclaimed by everyone it had to be the story of a Holocaust survivor - not a perpetrator. It had to be immersed in courage, struggle and tragedy. It isn't. Daldry shows an astounding level of patience with his actors and the source material to best extract the precise measured waves of discontent out of the screenplay. The Reader is methodical, often at the expense of its own pace, but it's also the rare film to get under the skin and explore unsettling themes of accountability and illicit desire, sneaking up on emotions instead of pouring on melodrama by the gallon.
Credit for the restraint lies with Daldry, who avoids most of the traditional button-pushing manoeuvring this type of awards-baiting drama typically receives. It's a harshly observational directorial job, following Michael as his life is distorted by Hanna's inadvertent psychological invasion, showing the boy introduced to sex and disillusionment during his time with the aloof woman. For the first act, The Reader is an especially provocative picture, rarely dodging the sexuality that binds the characters together. The effort opens sensuality and vulnerability to the feature in a blunt manner that's difficult to watch, yet impossible to ignore.
The film's second act takes matters to the courtroom, and while remaining emotionally and historically charged, the intimacy evaporates while matters of darkness roll into view. Hanna's trial and Michael's gut-wrenching war of ethics assume centre stage, yet the entire movement of this act is hinged on a mammoth personal revelation easily telegraphed by the audience in the first few moments of the film. Then it recovers nicely in the final movement, where the adult Michael seizes an opportunity to reconnect with Hanna, though he remains an offering from a distance. Daldry mines a strong response here from David Hare's screenplay, finding unique communication habits and glimmers of optimism within miles of depression.
Kate Winslet is tough, stubborn, and sometimes even curt as Hanna Schmitz, but behind that is a childlike curiosity and vulnerability that warms her to the viewer. Even when the full scope of what she has done is aired in the open, Winslet plays the role as that of a victim of circumstance, a woman who didn't know what she was getting into and, unable to get back out, made the best of her limited means. "What would you have done?" Hanna asks the judge during the trial, in reference to her days working at Auschwitz and Krakow. He doesn't have an answer.
As the young Michael, David Kross is highly appealing and, faced with some explicit sex scenes and nudity for a 17-year-old, decidedly brave. Kross takes Michael from a fumbling teenage boy to a wiser, more hardened young man in graduate school, and the stark contrast with which he portrays this character at two distinct ages is impressive. Ralph Fiennes makes a connective impact as the older Michael with less screen time. A man who has partially dedicated his life to a woman in prison whom he isn't sure he likes anymore, Michael is full of regrets and, by the end, has made the first steps to correcting them. Though they only share two scenes together, his relationship with grown daughter Julia (Hannah Herzsprung) is written with warmth and subtlety. Likewise, a late scene he has with Lena Olin, as a Holocaust survivor, is refreshingly civil, mature and plausible, free of the melodramatic histrionics a lesser film would have held.
The Reader is a drama that doesn't pander. It exists in a bubble of misery, though a handsome one with eye-catching locations and moody cinematography to accentuate the trauma. It's an obviously flawed film (I'm as upset about The Dark Knight as the biggest comic geek alive) but it remains an extremely well-made film that doesn't shove its message down our throats, and its prestige pic status belies its subtle intelligence. I have my reservations about it - those damn accents - and its hypnotic effect may break off now and then, but there remains an unsettling depiction of mournful obsession left behind that satisfies the soul. Well, mine at least.
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