Apology not accepted...

Rating: Null/10 (24 February 2009)

In the interest of full disclosure, I first posted this as a comment on a thread dealing with "The Reader" and any potential lessons that may or may not have come out of the movie:
That is the whole point I took from the movie. There are some things that cannot be washed away, guilt for which there is no repentance. Kate Winslett's character, Hana Schmitz is racked with guilt and her attempt at dealing with that guilt is taking on the blame for having written the report which justified the death of 300 Jewish women, even though she was illiterate.
But she clearly realizes that any act of contrition, any apology, any sorrow, though genuine, could not under any circumstance make up for what she did. If a human being is the total sum of the decisions and choices made throughout a lifetime, then this is as good example as any, that indeed we are what we say and do. As it was clear, Hana had gotten a promotion in Siemens AG as the war was starting, but due to her illiteracy she could not accept the promotion that would have seen her required to do office work. It was the same when her supervisor offers her a promotion when she was working as a ticket vendor/controller on the streetcar.
Yet there were people in the same situation as her, people that chose another path in life, instead she made the choice to become an SS camp guard, nobody forced her, and the reason that "it was a job" was a poor excuse as the movie makes it plainly clear. Yet, when she asked the judge "What would you have done?", the man was clearly stumped, because he did not have any answers.
Also, this points to the larger issue of national guilt. No matter what Germany does, it will always have to confront this terrible legacy which is now part of its history and its very fabric and psyche (as do many other countries in Europe e.g. Russia, Italy, France, all of Eastern Europe and so on). As one of Michael's classmates points out, the trial was a sham, it was a way to deflect guilt from the many to the few, it was a way for Germany to exorcise the demon of the Holocaust from its very soul, a futile attempt alas. As that same character remarked, it is much easier to point the finger at a certain group of people and say "they are evil, they are guilty, they should pay", instead of accepting your own share of guilt and complicity in such a harrowing and terrible event in our history. That character enunciates the whole issue, that it was not just the Nazis that had participated and brought to fruition the Holocaust, but that also all German people bore some responsibility for it, through direct action, complicit silence or utter ignorance.
I think that instead trying to rationalize something like this and pass the blame to people as obvious and grotesque as the Nazis, it is better to own it and embrace it in all its ugliness and terror. The Nazis have become over time gruesome caricatures of evil, a matrix for what evil is. I think that the more frightening aspect of the Holocaust and other such sad and tragic episodes in history is that the perpetrators are more often than not, all too human and not the monsters we would like them to be. That is far more disturbing.
One cannot absolve himself of such a deed, an individual or a nation, as the Holocaust, but one can have the resolve to accept the all encompassing guilt emanating from it and teach others about the perils of history, be always vigilant and serve as a living example of what man is capable in face of boundless ambition, thirst for power and the utter need to demonstrate purity and superiority above others.
I think that "The Reader" imparts this lesson if one is only willing to pay attention and have an open mind. Lena Olin's character of the Holocaust survivor tells Ralph Finnes's character "Absolution is something I do not want nor have the right to give" (I'm paraphrasing here). Kate Winslett's character does not apologize because no apology could ever make up for her deeds. But both both victim and victimizer in the end come as close to an agreement as possible, to a commonality, Hana Schmitz leaves Michael her money, and Lena Olin's character agrees in the end with Michael's suggestion that the money be given to a charity dealing with literacy. In that, there is a common purpose and as close to an understanding as possible, and it comes full circle to the issue of learning.
As Bruno Ganz's character, the professor, tells Michael, "If people like you don't learn from what happened to people like me, then what the hell is the point of it all?". We have to learn from history lest we be doomed to repeat it, and in learning we have to step out of our own comfort zone and learn from both the victims but as well as the perpetrators, as difficult as that may be.
So it is perhaps right, that nothing good came out of the story, because nothing good is supposed to, how can it?