The Reader

dreaMaker
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Post by dreaMaker »

Uri's narrowness will always impress me. :D
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Post by Uri »

How not surprising – The Reader is the perfectly easy to swallow look at the past so Germens are only too happy to embrace it. It's the ultimate feel good holocaust movie for (some of) them.
"I had to make her a woman who was capable of great love and affection and warmth," she said, "as well as (convey) the vulnerability and the shame."

How dumb can one be?




Edited By Uri on 1235975645
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Post by Penelope »

Germany more open to moral ambiguity of 'Reader'

By A.J. Goldmann, Special for USA TODAY

BERLIN — Kate Winslet took home Oscar gold a week ago for The Reader. But while Winslet may be the actress of the hour, American critics responded tepidly to her film, an adaptation of the best-selling novel by German author Bernard Schlink.

In Germany, where the movie just opened nationwide, The Reader is earning high praise as a penetrating exploration of the nature of German postwar guilt.

Schlink's novel was an unexpected sensation in Germany when it was published in 1995, and since then, it has been translated into nearly 40 languages.

One of the most damning American reviews of the film appeared in The New York Times: Critic Manohla Dargis said the film uses the Holocaust to make "the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation."

Two other articles lambasted the film for its rosy presentation of the Holocaust. Ron Rosenblum contributed an essay in Slate titled "Don't Give an Oscar to The Reader," and filmmaker Rod Lurie wrote in the Huffington Post that the film "reinforces Holocaust deniers." These and other attacks inspired a joint statement from director Stephen Daldry, producer Harvey Weinstein and Elie Wiesel, issued days before the Oscar ceremony, condemning "fringe criticism."

Such a motion won't be necessary in Germany, where the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. Much of that seems a result of the Vergangenheitsbewältigung— a cumbersome German word for "coming to terms with the past" — that has long been part of the country's discourse and makes the film's moral ambiguity more palatable here than in America.

At a news conference at the Berlin Film Festival, the filmmakers said the subject of the film is postwar Germany and not the Holocaust, a distinction that has been harder to stress in America.

Winslet spoke about the challenges of playing a former concentration camp guard and the responsibility she felt to make Hanna Schmitz into a human being. "I had to make her a woman who was capable of great love and affection and warmth," she said, "as well as (convey) the vulnerability and the shame."

This sentiment certainly reverberates in Germany, where the "banality of evil" argument — that the evils of the Holocaust were perpetrated not by psychopaths but by ordinary people — has been influential.

When the casting of Winslet was announced, the German media complained that the British actress wasn't ordinary enough; she was just too beautiful. Now critics are heaping praise on her performance, and on Daldry for creating an authentic portrait of the country in the aftermath of World War II.

Some reviews have responded to criticism the film has received in the USA. In the online edition of Die Welt, Hanns-Georg Rodek agreed with the decision not to include flashbacks in the scenes in which Hanna is on trial for crimes she committed in the camps. "It's not a film about the dead but rather the descendents of the killers, collaborators and onlookers," he said.

Schlink's novel is now considered a classic, but it remains somewhat controversial. The influential weekly magazine Der Spiegel commented that those who found the book objectionable for granting absolution to a Nazi murderer probably would think the same of the film, which is seen as more morally vague. The famed Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung agreed but found that the heightened ambiguity enhanced Winslet's performance.

These reactions suggest that The Reader is more important for Germany than for America. David Kross, the young German actor who appears alongside Winslet on screen, said at the news conference that he felt "a sense of responsibility for history" in appearing in the film. "I hope that many of my friends and people of my generation will have a chance to see this film and think about the issues it raises."
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Post by kaytodd »

One of the reasons I liked the book and film (though I do not think it deserved the BP nom) was the the ambiguous way they both handled Hannah's culpability for the atrocities that were going on around her, including the particular one for which she was standing trial.

You can tell this novel was written by a German citizen who lived through the exact time in which the story takes place. Hannah probably represents a lot of Germans during Hitler's reign. The State itself was rounding up the Jews and locking them up. That gave it a sense of legitimaticy. I am sure they just decided to not think about the possibility that actual genocide was taking place. Jews were just thought of as a threat to the State and had to be kept under control. Hannah had a job but she could make more as a concentration camp guard. It was just another job.

And it was not just Germans who were persecuting the Jews in Europe during that time. Outside the Scandanavian countries the people in the countries invaded by Germany offered invaluable help in the genocide of the Jews. It was something normal and accepted. That does not absolve Hannah and those like her at all, for there were many people in Germany and other parts of Europe who courageously tried to help Jews, many of whom paid for their courage with their lives.

It probably never even occurred to Hannah to fight the persecution of the Jews. But by the end of the story (in both the book and film) she had come to realize she had to answer for what she did. At least that's the way I saw it.

If I remember correctly, the book gives more details about the incident in the church and it is clear that Hannah was not as culpable as the other guards. The film seems to increase her culpability. The moment she pounds the table and explains the guards' decision to not unlock the church had to do with the need for "order" and to avoid "chaos" sounded like a very "German" point of view (I am of German descent from both of my parents' sides of the family and, despite everything, proud of it.) but it seemed inconsistent with the Hannah in the book. But I think it was important to show that many people in Germany and in the occupied areas saw the rounding up of the Jews as something that was just a part of the war and came to be accepted as people saw the massive government and military machine behind it.

BTW, there were a lot of people in the U.S. who spoke and wrote eloquently on behalf of Native Americans all through the 18th and 19th centuries. The U.S. Supreme Court even ruled in strongly worded opinions that Andrew Jackson could not move the Native Americans from their lands in the southeast U.S. (Jackson's response was to challenge the Court to raise an army and stop him.). We all know what ultimately happened to the Native Americans.




Edited By kaytodd on 1235350196
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Post by Sabin »

I was talking about the wrong scene.
But it was in the prison, when they were lovemaking via literature, that I lost it. The sheer romanticism of it all, the surprise realization that someone out there in the world loves you so much (as he must have if he bothered with all this... by doing this, it was as if he was recreating his affair and they were in their relationship again).

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Post by Big Magilla »

I wouldn't call Hanna a victim of the war, but she was a victim of her time. The film doesn't give us much background into her life before the war, and I don't know if the novel (which I haven't read) does either, but she was probably caught up in the Nazi movement as a teenager and ignorant and uneducated as she was, went along with the group think of a good many of her generation.
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Post by Okri »

Uri wrote:
Movielover wrote:So her reactions to the novels led me to view Hanna as a victim of the War as well.

Mission accomplished.
Yeah. Wow.
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Post by Uri »

Movielover wrote:So her reactions to the novels led me to view Hanna as a victim of the War as well.
Mission accomplished.
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Post by Movielover »

Sabin wrote:It's funny you mention that specific moment, Movielover. It's that moment I brought up last night at a party. That moment is so fucking stupid. She's just bawling her eyes out in that montage, but really the broadness of it wouldn't feel out of place in a ZAZ comedy. This is a film in which Hanna Schmidt must ricochet from laughter to tears. We can't show her smiling and just mildly chuckling. She has to bray with laughter. Then she must cry. It cannot be quietly tearing up. It must be outward bawling. Now, this is a character that is supposed to be enigmatic and proud and refuses to show her true motivation throughout almost the entire film. It feels out of place for such intense show of emotion in front of somebody so new.

Ah, but it's when she is being read to that she shows her true emotions! She makes other people read to her and recreate what she had with the boy so she can feel the same emotion, right? I find this to be pretty simplistic in the hands of Stephen Daldry, and even more so considering that she doesn't really react to being read to like she's illiterate. She doesn't really ask questions outside of an amusing reproach to a book that Michael reads to her that I cannot recall. Hanna Schmidt's illiteracy is something I just didn't entirely buy. I felt at all times like I was watching basically a horndog fantasy, that her illiteracy was a device simply enabling this kid's sexual awakening.
But she's not showing her emotion to anybody in the scene I am referring to - I am speaking about when she is in prison privately listening to the tapes.

I think you are referring to the very beginning of the movie where she shows grand emotions after first being read to by the boy - and I thought this was quite funny - as did everyone else in the audience. But I thought this was intentional on the part of the director/writer/performers.

But it was in the prison, when they were lovemaking via literature, that I lost it. The sheer romanticism of it all, the surprise realization that someone out there in the world loves you so much (as he must have if he bothered with all this... by doing this, it was as if he was recreating his affair and they were in their relationship again). Really, it reminded me of one of those troubled teen stories where the teen is about to off him/herself and then someone says, "But wait - don't do that... you matter to me!" I felt that was the undercurrent.

And I believe anyone who can respond to literature with such soaring emotions must be a wonderful person. I can relate to having intense emotional responses to works of literature. So her reactions to the novels led me to view Hanna as a victim of the War as well. She is a misunderstood woman who got the short end of the stick in life and only one person on the planet believes her.
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Post by Uri »

Here's what Israel leading critic had to say about it.

The Reader: disturbing and annoying.

By Uri Kline, Haarets

The Reader, the second collaboration between British director Steven Daldry and British play writer Davide Hare, is not a good film, it's disturbing and even annoying. One question aroused while watching it is: had The Reader been a better film, would it be less disturbing and annoying – or maybe even more so?

There's a lot in common between The Reader and The Hours, the previous film Daldry and Hare made together in 2002. Both films are based on best selling books which combined quality and popularity (Oprah Winfrey, who represent an indicator for such a combination, choose The Reader by Bernhard Schlink for her book club, an act which ensured its success in the USA). And in both cases this couple of creators managed to produce a product which immediately had the kind of quality like aroma, typical of best sellers, "serious" plays staged on Broadway or the West End – and also film whose base is popular, even slightly trashy, but the structure built on it is seemingly soaked with Artistic pretence and arrogance. By this aspect, and in view of there ability to materialize this strategy, Daldry and Hare seem to be the most cunning film makers operating nowadays.

The Reader, like The Hours, is all emotional and ideological manipulation. Daldry's first film, Billy Elliot, was also utterly manipulative, its narrative comprised by clichés, but in that film, written by Lee Hall, there was some engaging freshness which salvaged it from its banality and schematicsm. In The Hours, and even more so in The Reader, this freshness is missing, and the result seems to be an exercise in making a "well made" movie.

And it feature actors who are considered good even before their actual performance is evaluated: Ralph Fines is sour faced as needed as Michael Berg, a German lawyer, Kate Winslet is stern as required as Hanna Schmidt, the woman he had an affair with at 15, and Bruno Ganz is authoritative as usual as Michael's Law teacher, but it all serve to hide the fact the core of this film is shattered to pieces.

The Hours looked like it was assembled from a catalog of central issues of the contemporary debate about the position of women in society and culture. It dealt with issues such as depression, madness, despair and death, and due to the efficiency of it making it created a strong emotional experience. In The Reader thing are more complicated since the film deals with the memory of World War II and the Holocaust and the way second generation Germans deal with this memory.

(Here he goes into detailed description of the movie).

Shame and guilt are the two main emotions motivating the plot of The Reader, and since both of them are associated with the memory of the holocaust, it's clear Daldry and Hare don't know what to do with them. The Reader is the third recent film which ask us "to feel something" for a representative of the other side, meaning the Germans (it was preceded by The Boy in the Striped Pajama and Valkyrie). I'm not going to claim film about the German side shouldn't be made, by the way it has been done arise more questions than it provide understanding. Daldry and Hare aspire in their film for emotional, moral and historical ambivalence, but all they are able to achieve is confusion and recoiling. In the center of The Reader there's a sentimental melodrama, and the way it's combined with the themes the film pretend to deal with creates an experience which evoke a growing uneasiness.

And here we get to the main problem of the film which is actually Kate Winslet. There's no doubt Winslet is a capable actress and she may finely win the Oscar for her performance here, but choosing her for the role of Hanna Schmidt was a mistake. Hanna's supposed to be a common German woman whose tough, even crude, and this kind of character Winslet is not able to portray. She stiffens her shoulders and hardens her face, but it's not enough in order to draw the complex portrait of the woman she plays. While watching the film I thought about Hanna Shigulla, around the time she stared in The Marriage of Maria Brown and Lilly Marlen – and other films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder – she's the only actress I can imagine in this role. She had the right bluntness about her, and Fassbinder could have been the right director for this kind of project and not Daldry, who makes it his business that every scene in the film would be as elegant as it could be.

While watching The Reader it's possible to deny the fact that the character of Hanna Schmidt and her story evoke a certain amount of compassion, and use this denial as adefense. But it doesn't work. The attempt to understand the past doesn't work nor does the attempt to understand the way second generation Germans deal with it. In both cases the content is flat and shallow.

The Reader is all empty pretence. Still watching it, despite the accompanied uneasiness, evoke interest, since there is no way a film dealing with the memory of the holocaust wont be of interest. Hence we watch it with great attention and emotional involvement, but it's accompanied by resistance, and even more so, by antagonism toward the sense of opportunism and lack of awareness in the way the past, in Daldry and Hare's film, is turned into a glitzy popular melodrama.




Edited By Uri on 1235294872
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Post by Sabin »

It's funny you mention that specific moment, Movielover. It's that moment I brought up last night at a party. That moment is so fucking stupid. She's just bawling her eyes out in that montage, but really the broadness of it wouldn't feel out of place in a ZAZ comedy. This is a film in which Hanna Schmidt must ricochet from laughter to tears. We can't show her smiling and just mildly chuckling. She has to bray with laughter. Then she must cry. It cannot be quietly tearing up. It must be outward bawling. Now, this is a character that is supposed to be enigmatic and proud and refuses to show her true motivation throughout almost the entire film. It feels out of place for such intense show of emotion in front of somebody so new.

Ah, but it's when she is being read to that she shows her true emotions! She makes other people read to her and recreate what she had with the boy so she can feel the same emotion, right? I find this to be pretty simplistic in the hands of Stephen Daldry, and even more so considering that she doesn't really react to being read to like she's illiterate. She doesn't really ask questions outside of an amusing reproach to a book that Michael reads to her that I cannot recall. Hanna Schmidt's illiteracy is something I just didn't entirely buy. I felt at all times like I was watching basically a horndog fantasy, that her illiteracy was a device simply enabling this kid's sexual awakening.
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Post by Penelope »

The book had me nearly sobbing on the El in Chicago. The movie, not so much.
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston

"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
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Post by Damien »

Movielover wrote:Did anyone else lose it when they did the cross-cutting between Michael recording the books and Hanna's listening to them. I was bawling in the theatre.
Lost it only in the sense of getting more and more fed up with the sheer ridiculousness and tedious banality of the film.
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Post by Big Magilla »

I took it as her way of accepting Hanna's apology without accepting her money.
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Post by Movielover »

Put me on the Winslet bandwagon (although I haven't seen Doubt yet).

Saw the film last night and absolutely loved it. Lena Olin should have been nominated as well!

Did anyone else lose it when they did the cross-cutting between Michael recording the books and Hanna's listening to them. I was bawling in the theatre.

Also, could someone explain to me the significance of Lena Olin keeping Hanna's tea-tin. It seemed to be too deliberate a decision to gloss over, and I couldn't figure out why she would do that.

Thanks.
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