The Reader (US/Germany 2008)

This film has met with mixed reviews in the UK, with a resistance to the piecemeal structure of the film and to the presence of British stars in so German a story.  I’m not sure I should be including it here on a world film website – which is almost why I am putting up this post.  Financed by Neunte Babelsberg (a subsidiary of Studio Babelsberg), Mirage Films (a joint production company set up by Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella based in the UK) and The Weinstein Company, therefore without major conglomerate studio financing.  However, it has English language stars in Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes (Winslet is bothering the nominations twice with this and her performance in Revolutionary Road).

The supporting cast has a number of well-known German actors, not least Bruno Ganz, Wenders’ angel in Himmel über Berlin (who recently took on the potentially poisoned chalice role of Hitler in Der Untergang and who appeared in the German Foreign Language Oscar contender Der Baader Meinhof Komplex).  Also, Burghart Klaußner who has been visible in roles for Hans-Christian Schmid (such as Requiem) and Christian Petzold (Yella) and played the father in Goodbye Lenin.
Stephen Daldry has discussed his apprehension about how German audiences will react to his representation of the story – both because it deals with the issue of collusion by ordinary people in the Nazi regime, supposedly ignorant or otherwise, and because of the iconic status of the source material novel (interview at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A45065469).

It’s interesting why it is not being made by a German company, with German actors – particularly given the strength of talent within a revitalised German film industry at the moment.  Perhaps Daldry is wise to be uncertain, because of the controversy that films such as Der Untergang have created before this.  The Reader has (like the book) a potentially ‘apologist’ tone – casting the central character in the role of victim, despite her guilt and involvement in the atrocities in the camps.  The story’s emphasis on Michael’s responses to her, as a boy and man, is criticised as attempting to create forgiveness through this everyman figure.   Fiennes (who plays the older Michael) contends that it cannot be regarded as having a universal meaning, but rather it is a personal story, it cannot be read outside of one particular perspective.  I felt the film does work to allow a debate about our responses to this woman, and more widely, about how we judge and condemn others.  Or how any society deals with its own guilty past (not limited to German experiences).

Der Untergang produced a number of angry responses because of its portrayal of Hitler.  Wim Wenders, for example, wrote in depth about his abhorrence of the way the film evades narrative perspective, and allows Hitler a certain dignity in the way it renders his death.  The use of Traudi Junge (the young secretary employed by Hitler in the bunker) as an more ‘innocent’ point of view and the absence of the real histories and actions of those Nazi leaders created an effect to render ‘harmless’ the evil of those people.  (Wenders article is far more substantial than my summary – and my poor German! – can do credit to.  In Die Zeit “Tja, dann wollen wir mal” 21/10/04).

With Valkyrie on the horizon, already with the controversy over Cruise’s nationality and Scientology beliefs, the debate might be set to continue.  This film is backed by a Hollywood studio, Universal, which suggests a different approach again.  When the New New German wave of filmmakers offers a real change in perspective and subject matter, then some might question the revisiting of the past.  And particularly by perspectives outside of Germany itself.  For what it’s worth, I think The Reader does manage to open up all the complexities of those different relationships.  And reinforces film’s power as a place for these debates.  The scene with Lena Olin as Ilana Mather is incredibly powerful in demonstrating a Jewish victim’s less obvious responses to the past.  The film left me with the potential of literature to humanise us, whatever our crimes, without ever forgetting those crimes.