Secrets, sex and death

Rating: Null/10 (16 November 2011)

People will think The Reader is another holocaust story. Granted some areas of this film are based around it but it is the deeper subtext of this film and the questions it asks us that take it in another direction entirely. This film intends to show that not everyone involved was a monster.
We start with a middle aged Michael (Ralph Fiennes) preparing to meet with his daughter. He seems to be holding a secret. A secret he takes us on in his mind. We transport back to the fifties where Michael (now played by David Kroos) is eighteen and throwing up in the street. He is helped by a thirty year old woman, Hanna Schmitz (Winslet) who cleans up his mess and gets him home. When Michael is finally better he visits Hanna with a bunch of flowers to say thank you. Within minutes he realises that she is a secretive woman albeit seductive and when he spots her getting changed he finds himself swelling up and leaving. Of course he goes back, Hanna has left a lasting impression in a matter of minutes and upon his arrival an affair triggers. One which must be kept secret. Hanna blows hot and cold with a young naïve Michael, where all he wants to do is fall in love she seems to just want sex. She shows her distance when it takes the third time they sleep together before she tells him her name. As well as sex Hanna asks Michael to read to her, refusing to read anything himself. Over a summer the couple hold a steamy affair involving reading and sex, distancing Michael from the things an eighteen year old should be doing. Hanna begins to realise this and disappears leaving Michael distraught and wandering who this woman really was.
Years later he is attending law school. The class sit in on a war crime trial of six guards who would select people for death at Auschwitz. To Michael's horror he sees that Hanna is one of the guards on trial and that her distance and secrets were of her past but that isn't entirely accurate. Eventually Michael works out her secret and knowing it could help her in the trial he must decide whether this secret will bring justice to her victims.
Michael still beats himself up over his choices and still in his fifties he finds himself writing and taping himself reading books for Hanna's benefit as she rots in prison. He can't seem to see evil in her.
The film ranges from a love story, to a political drama, to a war-crime holocaust piece to a non linear grudge story. It never seems to really settle on a genre and as we go through we change into different tones. The film starts great and continues well when we find out Hanna's secret. Although the secret becomes a twist to the film it seems to be very minimal for the circumstances this woman finds herself in. The secret could lighten her sentencing but instead she would rather not be ashamed. The only way I can see through this is as if she realises the pain she has caused and believes she should be punished.
The Reader does show the holocaust in a different way. We see it from this woman who is not particularly evil but of one following orders and her job. She is deemed as bad as every other soldier involved and that's where the differences is, we strangely sympathise with her when really we shouldn't. She even says to the judge, 'what would you have done?', when he asks if she was involved in the selection of people next in line for the chamber. Not giving her an excuse but it shows how several people chose to dust the occurrences under the carpet in order to continue with life.
Many will find this a little off putting as no one wants to give sympathy to the criminals during the holocaust but the film has a lot of subtext which go deeper. It's all about secrets. The affair is a secret for starters, at only eighteen Michael can't tell his parents he is sleeping with a thirty year old woman and it is something she also wants to keep hidden. Also the secret which he knows can get her off the hook. Does he reveal it or doesn't he? The film is about false love, false hope and choices. The choices we make that define a person and a generation and this film shows how different generations attempt to understand each other.
The acting is great, the young Kroos and Winslet hold great chemistry with an erratic relationship and Ralph Fiennes comes in to add an emotional edge in the last forty minutes. His first meet with Winslet after years is sad and perfectly acted from both parties. The cinematography is realistic and believable and really shows a post war Germany as they attempt to cover the cracks and forget the horrific past. I would have liked to have seen it told more linear however as at times it became confusing.
Not the best post war Germany film to be released and also not the best holocaust film but it does force you to ask different questions towards what went on in these times and although it will not change anyone's opinion on what actually happened it may make you start thinking about it much deeper than you did before.