Haunting Post-Holocaust Drama Falls Short Despite Solid Work from Winslet and Kross

Rating: 6/10 (2 August 2009)

If you mixed Robert Mulligan's "Summer of '42" with Stanley Kramer's "Judgment at Nuremberg", you could likely come up with a melodramatic hybrid as lugubrious as this 2008 drama about post-WWII moral ambiguity and obsession. Adapted by playwright David Hare ("Plenty") from Bernhard Schlink's critically acclaimed 1995 novel, the film directed by Stephen Daldry ("The Hours") offers the veneer of an important subject in reflecting upon the years-later psychological aftermath of the Holocaust. The source book deals with the difficulties which subsequent generations have in comprehending the scope and magnitude of the war crimes However, the screenplay focuses more squarely on the passionate affair that develops between Hanna Schmitz, an enigmatic, controlling woman in her mid-thirties, and Michael Berg, an impressionable fifteen-year-old student in 1958 Berlin.
The film begins well enough when the focus is primarily on these two characters with Hanna calling upon Michael to read to her during their discreet afternoon meetings. The affair ends abruptly, and he doesn't see her again until six years later when she goes on trial with several other women for contributing to the murder of 300 Jews while she was serving as an SS guard at Auschwitz. The plot turns on a key revelation that is quite obvious from the early scenes, yet it is at this point when the film loses momentum considerably. Daldry's excessive jumbling of the timeline does not help either in overcoming the increasingly convoluted storyline which has the older Michael conveying a deep sense of conflict over Hanna when she is found guilty and serves a life sentence.
Making good cinema out of such introspection poses a challenge. We are meant to empathize with a man who is torn between protecting the subject of his youthful ardor and withdrawing from the horror of the crime for which she accepts accountability. When the plot threads wrap together with the characters' fates sealed, there is a pervasive sense of emptiness since Daldry and Hare cannot move us emotionally beyond the elliptical nature of Hanna and Michael's relationship. This leaves the principal actors to fill in the gaping holes. In response, Kate Winslet gives a strong, nuanced performance as Hanna, foregoing much of her glamour to track the oblique character over three decades of stoic concealment. German actor David Kross is genuinely affecting as Michael, and he brings the necessary vulnerability and eagerness to make more palatable the controversial sex scenes with Winslet. Ralph Fiennes has the diabolically difficult role of the older, haunted Michael, who must come to terms with his unresolved feelings toward Hanna. He is given precious little latitude to flesh out an obviously pained character.
Give credit to Daldry and Hare, however, for attempting to tread a fine morality line in presenting a character whose sense of duty to the Nazis did not end up defining her life. At the same time, they fall short in dramatically connecting her lack of rehabilitation with the broader question of responsibility and culpability for the Holocaust. There are plenty of extras on the 2009 DVD beginning with five separate featurettes. The first is the standard "making of" puff piece with the cast and crew discussing the characters and the production, while another is a ten-minute interview with Kross and Daldry about the young actor's casting. Winslet is spotlighted primarily for the make-up and prosthetics she had to don as the aging Hanna. Two shorts focus on Nico Muhly's haunting soundtrack and Brigitte Broch's meticulous production design. The theatrical trailer is also included, although the best extra is a run of deleted scenes, 42 minutes in total, which provide added context for some of the more elliptical turns of the story.