One of the most intelligent multiplex films in an age

Rating: 10/10 (4 February 2009)

I suppose I should have expected more from "The Reader" than I actually did. After all, this was the same writing and directing team, (David Hare and Stephen Daldry), who had done such a superb job in bringing Michael Cunningham's 'difficult' novel "The Hours" to the screen. Perhaps it was the subject matter, (a May/September romance, both in terms of age as well as in duration, with the Holocaust thrown in for dramatic backdrop), or perhaps it was just the publicity afforded Kate playing older and dowdier than she actually is as if deglamourizing a glamorous actress in itself amounts to 'acting'. I should have known better. Hare, Daldry, Winslet and Fiennes don't do second-rate or hand-me-downs. "The Reader" is superb.
I haven't read the original novel but you might say that it, too, is 'difficult'. The film certainly deals in weighty themes; guilt, forgiveness, retribution, redemption. It is primarily a love story and it covers a period of years. As with "The Hours" it moves back and forth in time. It has a conventional beginning and end; it's the middle that is off-kilter. The Holocaust does indeed form the background but it is not used flippantly or as mere window-dressing. This is one of those rare commercial movies to talk about after you see it. It is a movie to discuss and argue over, one which engages the head as well as the heart and it certainly does engage the heart; I was moved to tears more than once, (and not in a sentimental way, either).
The story is simple even if the themes are complex. A 15 year old boy has a brief but very passionate affair with a woman who helps him when he takes ill in the street. After a few months she leaves him. During their affair she asks him to read to her before or after sex, anything from Tin Tin to Lady Chatterly which, despite having seduced a 15 year old, she finds distasteful. The boy goes on to study law and a few years later he sees the woman again only now she is a defendant in a war-crimes trial. It is at this point that the film takes off; issues that might have seemed black-and-white become fudged or more complex. The film deals, not just with feelings and emotions, but with intellect as well. There is a good deal more here than meets the eye.
As I've said I haven't read the source novel, which was originally written in German, but the script seems to me a superb example of the art of writing for the screen in balancing the obvious emotionality of the subject with the kind of deeper themes the subject engenders, while Daldry's direction is a model of restraint. As for Winslet's much vaunted performance, she really is extraordinary. This really is a 'difficult' part. The woman is superficial in so far as she reveals nothing of her character, at least initially. She is a tabula rasa and it is left to us to fill in the blanks, (although I think an audience will cop on quicker than the boy does). And it's not just a case of playing dowdy or wearing make-up that ages the actress beyond recognition. It's in how much of the character Winslet reveals, and in stages, to the audience. It's in the physicality of her emotions and not in her appearance that Winslet's performance rests. She deserves every award she has won and more.
The boy is played by a newcomer, David Kross, and he's fine in so far as it goes, but faced with more seasoned performers he seems a little out of his depth. In later life he is played by Ralph Fiennes; it's a small part for Fiennes but he's as good here as he's ever been in anything else I've seen him do. Fiennes is a master of reticence and silence who can convey more with a look than most actors can with a whole page of dialogue. Perhaps I would have been more impressed with Kross' performance had a lesser actor than Fiennes played him elsewhere. There are also fine cameos from those fine actors Bruno Ganz and Lena Olin.
By now, you may have gathered I think very highly of "The Reader". a film which treats its audience with the same intelligence as those involved in its execution. In an age of multiplex fodder, for this we should be truly grateful.