Who are the real criminals?

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2009)

If any actress deserves to win two Academy Awards for Best Actress in the same year (for Revolutionary Road and The Reader) that actress is Kate Winslet. Kate Winslet is the greatest actress in the world today and proves it again in a stupendous performance in a story that deals with never ending guilt, personal shame and the nature of evil. Only an actress of Ms. Winslet's skill could have performed the role of Hanna Schmidt. Although a concentration camp guard and Nazi war criminal, one can develop a measure of sympathy for this character who herself becomes a victim. At no times does this movie offer any excuses for Schmidt's behavior. She was following orders and it resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, deaths that could have been easily prevented. But was she acting alone? Did she give the orders? Or was she just a cog in a huge murder machine which years later makes her a scapegoat? The audience is presented with a plain-looking but passionate woman who is just trying to survive and has a personal secret which she wants to hide. And although she served in a criminal organization and was party to the commission of horrible crimes, it seems that the real criminals are those who fail to reveal information about her that would have at least mitigated her guilt. Although Ms. Winslet correctly is the star of the movie, the driving character in this story is the boy lover who many years later fails to act to save his one-time lover. The first part of this moving which tries to show the intensity of the initial relationship is unconvincing. There's lots of steamy bedroom scenes but ultimately they fall flat as boy-man is just a little too boyish and Hanna Schmidt is just a little too aloof to convey a sense of a powerful bond. So the audience has to accept as a given that the bond exists in order for the rest of the story to be effective. The movie however does pick up in pace and intensity when the boy now a young man sees his ex-lover on trial for war crimes, crimes that he knows, and has evidence to prove, she could not have committed or at least ordered. The conflict is framed. The players are on the field. Hanna Schmidt is hapless; her secret obvious; her victimization complete. She was doing her job, doing what she was ordered to do. Did that make her a criminal? Indeed, who are the real criminals?
Bruno Ganz is great as the boy-man's teacher and mentor.