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“When we open ourselves
you yourself to me and I myself to you,
when we submerge
you into me and I into you
when we vanish
into me you and into you I
Then
am I me
and you are you.”
-Bernhard Schlink, The Reader
Review in a Phrase: Behind all the riddle is a secret that will cause you to doubt all you've ever known.
Introduction
Director - Stephen Daldry
Writer - David Hare
Based on the Book By - Bernhard Schlink
Running Time - 2h 4m
Genres - Drama, Romance
Cast - Kate Winslet (Hanna Schmitz), Ralph Fiennes (Michael Berg), David Kross (Young Michael Berg), Lena Olin (Rose Mather/Ilana Mather) and Bruno Ganz (Professor Rohl)
Elevator Pitch
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“I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, it will give it spice. You will leave life even more beautiful than you ended it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love.”
-Michael
Some movies retain a successful book's legacy. In turn, some novels offer a contentious exploration of a culture's communal guilt and shame. The Reader manages both by adapting German author Bernhard Schlink's popular 1995 classic book for the big screen.
To state that The Reader is an unusual film is an underestimate.
If the first half feels like a story flirting with an NC-17 rating due to sexually explicit illustrations involving an underage character, the second half appears like a crime courtroom drama devoted to unraveling some of the story's most serious issues of war, generational guilt, and punishment.
The book has enormous historical relevance in Germany, director Stephen Daldry adds. “It is the one and only novel that addresses the question, ‘How do we continue after what we have done?'... This is a film about finding the truth and atoning.”
Plot Summary - Spoiler Alert!
Walking down a cobblestone waterlogged street, a 15-year-old boy grabs his overcoat. It starts to rain. The boy's rust-red face indicates that he is ill. He pukes in an archway, near the bus stand. A woman on her way home from work as a tram conductor takes pity on him and cleanses his face.
After recovering from scarlet fever months later, young Michael Berg returns to thank the woman and accidentally witnesses glimpses of her changing clothes. And when caught he runs away. He comes back, as he is hooked.
The first hour is nearly entirely concentrated on Michael and Hanna's sexual relationship, with many graphic sex scenes depicting both male and female nudity. The camera follows Hanna as she guides Michael through the process of sexual intercourse, instructing him on what to do.
“In the past, I had particularly loved her smell. She always smelled fresh, freshly washed or of fresh laundry or fresh sweat or freshly loved”
- Bernhard Schlink, The Reader
She seduces him and commences an affair that takes place for that whole summer, shaping the rest of his life. Hanna Schmitz is equal parts fierce and erotic, revealing all of her body but none of her inner self, her soul to a boy who immediately becomes addicted to their recurrent seductive engagements.
She only demands one thing from him: that he reads to her. And that's what he does. The Odyssey by Homer. Mark Twain's novel Huckleberry Finn. “The Lady With the Little Dog,” by Anton Chekhov. Michael reads aloud to Hanna in a modest romance marked by Imagery of decorously writhing body, grins, tears, screams, and literature.
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“It wasn't that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point, the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?”
-Bernhard Schlink, The Reader
Michael doesn't discover Hanna's first name until their third tryst, demonstrating how entirely concentrated on sex their relationship is. Then, just as swiftly as it began, their relationship comes to an end. Hanna mysteriously departs, leaving her young boy toy, who has professed his love for her, heartbroken... and intensely scarred.
In 1966, he graduated from Heidelberg Law School. A professor invites Michael and a few of his peers to a war crimes courtroom trial of several low-level Nazi SS officers. Six ladies are on trial. Hanna Schmitz is one of them. Michael finds Hanna to be a guard engaged in a forced march of 300 women and children who almost all died in a church fire as the security officers refused to open the doors.
Michael is forced to confront not only his secret past as a young law student and later as an adult, but also the humiliation and sorrow of a country struggling to come to terms with all of its horrible misdeeds—symbolized by the austere, secretive/taciturn lady who had stolen Michael's innocence.
Positive and Negative Elements
The opening scene of The Reader isn't exactly positive. It does, however, provide an essential clue as to Hanna's long-term impact on Michael. “Does any lady ever remain here long enough to find out what passes on in your head?” a naked lady, Hanna, casually asks an adult Michael (after staying overnight with him).
Michael's clandestine relationship with Hanna has made it impossible for him to share the intricacies of his heart with any woman, as per the entirety of the movie. As a result, the film implies that his heinous, absolutely inappropriate, and immoral affair with Hanna has ruined his ability to commit or love truly.
“Societies think they operate by something called morality, but they don't. They operate by something called law.”
-Professor Rohl
During Hanna's trial, philosophical concerns over who should be held accountable when a whole nation goes off the rails are posed. Hanna is depicted as a woman who is only attempting to do her job effectively. At the same time, it's evident that she's been a part of awful, monstrous crimes.
The movie closes with Michael taking Julia, his grown-up daughter, into the gravesite of Hanna and revealing to her this secret phase of his life. The epilogue could imply that Michael's decision to reveal his long-held secret will liberate him up to love better in the future
The Bottom Line
"The Reader" is a dense film, perhaps too brainstem for some. Even if the film relates to the 'sins of our fathers,' and pertains to Nazism in its essence, yet "The Reader" is primarily a film that mirrors all of our emotions.
I sat motionless, shocked by what I'd seen. It's a film that you'll never forget. "Have you spent much time thinking about the past?" a matured Michael asks Hanna. She responds, heartbroken,
“It doesn't matter what I feel. It doesn't matter what I think. The dead are still dead.”
-Hanna Schmitz
My ratings for the movie - 4.5 on 5
Written By - Prakriti Chaudhary
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