Directed by Stephen Daltry
You know you’ve seen a good film when you can’t stop thinking about it for days afterwards. You know it’s a great film when parts of it replay in your memory long after having seen it – the sensual imagery lingers, the torment is recalled and the ramifications of the drama continue to echo in your mind. The Reader tells the story of Michael Berg (David Kross), a boy growing up in post-war Germany.
He is fifteen years old when he has a brief affair with a woman Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) who is old enough to be his mother. It is not until he is a law student many years later that Michael (Ralph Fiennes is the older Michael) sees Hanna who is on trial for having committed war crimes in a prison camp. It is then that he discovers her shameful secret.
There have been many films made about the Holocaust, but this is one of the most complex because it turns the tables on the traditional depictions of victim and oppressor. It also uncompromising when it deals with the very real problem of how a new generation comes to terms with a tarnished past. Many ordinary people had to share the ‘collective responsibility’ and ‘collective guilt’ for what happened and The Reader avoids easy notions of forgiveness and redemption. As Fiennes says, ‘The questions it asks about blame, judgement, guilt, love, sexuality are all quite complicated, but in the end it’s a very humane story’.
The semi-autobiographical book of the same name, written by Law Professor Bernhard Schlink, was described by the Los Angeles Times as a ‘beautiful, disturbing and morally devastating novel’. Stephen Daltry’s haunting film joins his other superb films (The Hours and Billy Elliot) as one of those memorable films that will stay with you.
Lezly Herbert
