Best of Oscar, Part 1: The Reader

Victoria and I are on a mission to watch all five Best Picture nominees before the Oscars! The jury is still out on whether we’ll succeed, but we managed to watch one movie for sure Here is the first mini review; you can read my introduction to this series here.

The Reader
Written for the screen by David Hare, directed by Steven Daldry, and starring Kate Winslet, David Kross and Ralph Fiennes.

(Mild story spoilers follow.)

It only seems fitting that the first of this year’s Oscar contenders comes from the two men who pioneered the art of the Oscar campaign: The Reader, distributed by The Weinstein Company. Pushed as a “holocaust movie”, which is indeed the movie’s overarching theme, The Reader is really a character study of two people connected by a single summer in 1950′s Germany.

Michael Berg is only 15 years old when he encounters the unlikely first love of his life: Hanna Schmitz, who is easily twice his age. Reclusive, harsh and emotionally repressed – all for reasons that won’t become clear until later – Hanna breaks social taboos (as well as the law) as she engages in a physical relationship with Michael. She uses sex as a reward for his companionship, and eagerly listens as Michael reads out loud the many literary classics that are part of his school work. The relationship only lasts a summer, but Michael will be haunted by the experience for the rest of his life.
The former lovers’ paths cross again several years later, but this time Hanna is not aware of the fact. Now a law student at the University of Heidelberg, Michael attends the trial against five former guards of the Auschwitz concentration camp, who, after the the publication of a holocaust survivor’s memoir, now stand accused of murder. One of these guards is Hanna Schmitz, and as Hanna’s secret history unravels before the eyes of a German nation that is all too desperate to come to terms with its recent past, Michael is trying to reconcile his personal feelings for Hanna.

For Victoria and me, The Reader was “one of the two Kate Winslet movies”. Winslet had already won Golden Globes for her roles in Revolutionary Road and The Reader, and we were eager to watch both movies. Revolutionary Road hadn’t been nominated for Best Picture, and Victoria hadn’t finished reading the book – so we decided to watch The Reader first, even though neither of us knew much about the movie (other than the fact that Oprah Winfrey just loved Kate Winslet’s breasts). I certainly don’t regret our decision!

The Reader is a very well crafted and well acted movie. Set exclusively in the decades following WW2 (without the use of any flashbacks), the holocaust is examined from a fresh and unique angle. It’s an extremely powerful movie – there are a few moments in the film that brought me to tears as closely as a guy is allowed to admit publicly.
But The Reader is not an easy movie to watch. There are no easy answers for the audience and the characters (even though the story would have allowed for “Hollywood cop outs” on a couple of occasions). It is this commitment to being “difficult” that gives The Reader its strength. The story arc feels authentic and real, all of its character are complex and often uncompromising in their behavior. “If you’re looking for catharsis, go to books or the theater. You won’t find it here,” says one of the characters towards the end of the movie. That’s a fitting summery of how the movie handles the subject, but it’s done with such balance and care that the experience doesn’t feel incomplete. I left the theater feeling very good about having watched this movie, and had gained some additional insight on the subject. That’s what good movie making is all about! Entertainment that stays with us beyond the popcorn.

“Best Picture Nominee” worthiness: 4/5. The Weinstein connection take off half a star, as does my feeling that “holocaust movies” have been favored way too heavily by the academy in recent years (The Counterfeiters and Downfall being just two of the most recent examples). But I wholeheartedly recommend watching The Reader, and wouldn’t mind seeing it win the Oscar. The thought-out portrait of the two main characters serves as the perfect allegory for Germany’s national guilt following WW2. I don’t think anybody has been able to communicate the complexities of this topic as well as The Reader does.