A superior Oscar-garnished love story exploring difficult issues

Rating: 8/10 (17 January 2012)

"The reader" is a dark fable from post-war Germany, which asks - but fails to answer - some searching questions about individual and collective guilt, selfishness and kindness. Maybe such questions are ultimately unanswerable, but they have to be asked. It is also a deeply touching love story, beautifully constructed and acted from the start.
A troubled middle-aged barrister, Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) reflects on his 15-year old self (David Kross), and the affair that lit up his life in dour, rain-soaked, 50s Berlin. During a tram journey he becomes ill, vomiting in an alley; and a stranger (Kate Winslet) cleans him up and helps him home. After recovering from a long illness he returns with flowers to her poky little flat. A central feature of the flat is a bathtub, fuelled by coal. He sees her bathing, and becomes obsessed with the woman - who is obviously much older - and visits her again. He himself is a charming, well-educated, popular and handsome young man. After helping her with bags of coal, he is persuaded to take a bath, whereupon she secretly observes his naked body, then seduces him. So begins their brief encounter – a strange but tender one, which involves him reading to her in between bouts of bathing and of course lovemaking. There is nothing pornographic about the sex, but it is intensely erotic with Winslet's womanly figure against Kross's toned youthful body. I don't know whether Kate used a body double, but it certainly doesn't appear so. He reads all sorts of things – Mark Twain, Chekhov, Tintin comics, even erotica (which she pretends to disapprove of). The odd thing is that she herself never reads the books, indeed she seems totally uninterested in books as objects. He knows nothing about this solitary woman except her name, Hanna; she neither knows nor cares anything for his background. She has set strict boundaries to their relationship. Yet she becomes the gravitational centre of his universe, as she is the centre of the whole movie. He discovers she is a tram conductor, and he tries to meet her on a tram. This triggers a row in which she shows her cold, cruel side. But they go on an idyllic bicycle tour, and fetch up at a country church where children are singing some sublime choral music. She looks at him with tears streaming down her face, clearly she has an innate ability to respond to great art. But there is something deeper about her response. The church itself is significant in some way. In a rare scene involving herself without him, she is offered promotion to an office job. Strangely this triggers an exodus, she packs her bags and leaves. Some observant viewers may already guess what's going on. When he discovers the empty flat, Michael is devastated.
We move to the middle part of the film, with our hero a law student (still played by David Kross). He has lost some of his jaunty disposition, having been deeply affected by Hanna's abandonment of him. As part of his studies he attends a war crimes trial, where he is shocked to learn that his former lover is up on trial for crimes against humanity, committed as an SS Guard. This is where, to avoid spoilers, we have to leave this absorbing story.
Please watch this film. I believe this film throws up some intriguing moral points which deserve reflection on the part of the viewer. Of course points about retribution and mercy, but also about the ageing process, remorse, the role of literacy in our society. A modern, humane Germany coming to terms with its brutal past. This may be the first time we have seen a sympathetic portrait of a full-on Nazi war criminal other than Hitler himself. The film is visually superior, realistically re-creating scenes from the recent history of Germany, from wet Berlin to the sunny countryside. David Kross is outstanding as the young student, so eager to shed his virginity but in much deeper than he can imagine. Yes, the film has flaws. The conceit of making the actors speak English with a German accent is almost laughable these days. There is some unconvincing stuff which tries to establish the Fiennes character in a domestic and work context. I'm not entirely convinced by Ralph Fiennes himself – so perfect in "The English patient". Physiologically he is so different from David Kross that we can't make a proper connection between the two. Fiennes is too melancholy and urbane. Maybe a better alternative would have been to use makeup and prosthetics to age Kross. After all, they did a superb job with Kate Winslet. And that brings me to the huge central performance – that of Winslet herself. She bravely shows everything that is required of this character – a deeply flawed psyche, beauty, intense sexuality, vulnerability. But also coldness, cruelty, ultimately an unknowable human being. I can visualise her face during the trial - lonely, puzzled, hopeless, but still beautiful. I can't praise her performance enough, it is utterly haunting, and well deserving of the Oscar she received.