Basically, an unintentional whitewash

Rating: 6/10 (17 May 2009)

This is one of those rare opportunities one has, to compare and contrast a novel (Schlink's 'Der Vorleser') with its movie, both being recent and both being controversial. All in all, my take would be that the movie comes out on top. It is more nuanced than the novel, the characters are better delineated, it grips the viewer without the subtle, insidious effect the novel seems to have had on most of its critics (including top-notch ones!). The bottom line, in the novel at least, is that the monstrous behavior of former SS officers is buried in an avalanche of schmaltz, romantic delusions, euphemisms... Hanna's total lack of humanity is at least partly excused on the grounds of her illiteracy: a hard one to swallow, also because it is not at all clear how she could have joined the SS AND a tram company without even being able to write her own name; genocide becomes hidden in childish arguments (Hanna 'gladdens' the last days of many perfectly healthy, innocent young women before sending them to the gas chamber!); in the discussion about the church fire (caused by that nasty Allied air force!), much judicial quibbling is devoted to establishing who had written a report on the fire, and no-one asks the obvious question 'Why were those innocent women locked up in a church against their will?'; the death march (not shown in the movie) is made to sound, in the novel, almost like a pleasant walk before a picnic. In regard to the above issues, the movie performs rather better than the novel, due perhaps to input from non-authorial sources. Therefore, in my view, the movie deserves, perhaps, six out of ten.