Hanna's secret - possible spoiler

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2009)

If you have not seen the movie or if you have not heard to plot synopsis please take my word for it, this movie is powerful, it may shake you to the core. It is about hard choices and how we deal with them. Now please stop reading.
p l e a s e
Hanna's secret, that she is illiterate is so crucial to who she is. We tend to understand why she acts as she does, but one of the central and pivotal decisions in the movie is Michael's decision to do nothing about his knowledge of that secret. Pay back for the hurt that she has caused? I do not think so. It is more a decision to honor her startling choice of responsibility for 300 deaths over revelation of her secret. there is no doubt that Hanna also bore guilt for the deaths. She is seemingly the only honest person in the courtroom, telling the truth when all have lied. It is only about herself that she lies. Michael could have confronted her, could have revealed the information to the court in several other ways, certainly through his professor he could access the right people, but he keeps Hanna's secret for her and suffers for it even more than he had before.
This is a story of honest and proud people trying to remain true to who they believe themselves to be. She does not intellectualize her decisions, "I was a guard." "You can't let prisoners run loose!" It never occurred to her to ask why these people were prisoners but one look at her life and we see that she too was a prisoner. This does not absolve her of her guilt, but it does explain her actions. Unlike the other guards she understands too late that there was another way and for that she accepts responsibility.
But even more than the admission in court, her decision to send Michael to New York produces the most compelling scene in the movie as the agent of the guard confronts the victim and survivor. It is heady stuff and though the victim is sometimes criticized for being cold and bitchy, how else could she be when a stranger brings such news and an apparent plea for forgiveness. And what seems like a cold inquiry, "What was your real relationship with that woman?" turns to be the source of redemption for Michael, he finally admits to another his secrets, in the scope of things they are not big, but they have weighed on him for over 30 years by that time.
One last thing, the strange sad, beautiful gift of a tin. It was the wrapping that was more valuable than the gift.
I did not always understand the motivation of the actors, but in the end their unexplained motives play out as in real life leaving us the viewers to pick up the pieces and move on.