The Reader (2008)

Brief: A chance encounter leads to an affair between a teen, Michael Berg (David Cross), and an older trolley worker, Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet). Years later while at law school, Michael attends a war crimes tribunal to find Hanna on trial for her time as a guard at Auschwitz.

If I tell you that the performances are uniformly excellent -- particularly Winslet as a woman who holds steadfastly to her belief that one does one's job as best as one can without questioning and who's great shame lies not in something that can never be undone or forgiven but in something she knows not how to change -- can we move on to why this story doesn't work best on screen?

Despite having never read it, I feel almost certain that the book must be better than the movie. Kate Winslet as a sexy older lady having an affair with a kid half her age and who happens to secretly be a Nazi certainly sounds like a pulpy premise, doesn't it? But in his effort to focus on the psychic scars that haunt post-war Germany to this very day (or at least to 1995 where Ralph Fiennes, as the oldest iteration of Michael Berg, reflects back on them), director Stephen Daldry presents us with another deadly dull literary adaptation. (Sidebar: Can you believe he directed Billy Elliot?)

Before you point out that perhaps the post-war Germany bit is more important than the sexy-Nazi bit, let me remind you that there are sexy movies about post-war Germany. It can be done. I am certain that there are stories about that time in that country's history that can and should be told, but this movie isn't the place I would look for one if I were you. There's a scene late in the movie between Fiennes and Lena Olin, as a survivor who wrote a memoir about her time in the camps and whose testified against Hanna, that would be a good starting off point. It carefully maintains a balance between wanting Fiennes to spell it out and wondering what good that would do. It put me in mind of My Own Private Lower Post, a powerful short about the psychic scars that reservation schools have unto the second and third generations.

While Winslet can't win enough awards in my opinion,* I would also hand one over to Bruno Ganz. He so perfectly embodied the role of a special seminar professor that it nearly took me by surprise.

My greatest surprise, however, came in the form of Nico Muhly's score. It relied, of all things, on the oboe. I had a professor who told us that we do not trust the oboe (or any instrument with a double reed) because it reminds us instinctively of the snake in Eden. There is something lovelorn about it and Muhly's work.** If only the movie could have maintained the same tone. Well, and moved a bit quicker. And maybe have been a bit shorter. B

*After all, working with Daldry and donning a prosethetic won Kidman an Oscar.

**It reminded me of nothing so much as the score for Sweeney Todd, to be honest.