The Reader

Despite the sound bites and the hyperbole of political discourse, there is no such thing as a binary world. Issues don't have two sides; they have many subtle interplays. Events can be interpreted by as many people who participated. We are rarely confronted by easy choices.

The Reader is a stunningly complex, slowly developed film, worthy of watching before dinner, before a glass of wine, so that you are prepared for not quite understanding why the characters acted as they did.

Bernard Schlink, a public law and philosophy professor in Berlin, wrote the novel. David Hare wrote the screenplay. He joins Stephen Daldry, the director, once again, after their successful collaboration in The Hours.

There are too many spoilers to truly review The Reader. It is a intricate ambiguous story set in Germany that involves the love affair between a fifteen year old boy, Michael, and a thirtysomething year old transit worker, Hanna. The summer they spent together began a life long challenge to Michael's morality, and it is those decisions that he must make, all stemming from his love for Hanna, that become the heart of the story. For anyone who wants a fast paced morality tale, you won't get it here. I went to see the film with two women friends, Nicky and Christine, and we talked over three bottles of wine until after midnight, gently pulling off layers of the story, but never finding all of the answers.

Which brings me to the performances by Kate Winslet, David Kross, and Ralph Fiennes. Winslet is up for a best performance Oscar for her portrayal of Hanna. Nothing is explained, yet Winslet brings the humanity of her secrets to the audience without hysteria or melodrama. There is something strangely simple about the world that Hanna has constructed around herself without going into the familiar. This is not another German bystander film for either Winslet's character or for Michael, whether as a boy or as a man. This is a film that celebrates the passion of reading, the redemptive quality of ideas, the depth of shame, and an intricate intimacy between a boy and a woman with a string of dangerous secrets. Michael is played as a boy by German actor David Kross with an innocence and passion of a truly privileged and intelligent child who is alienated from his father and protected by his mother. As an adult, Michael is portrayed by Ralph Fiennes who brings his melancholy, his ability to say nothing with words and tell us everything with a look, a faint smile, or doing nothing. His brooding, yet the hope he brings to the story, draws us in. We want him to do the right thing.

Then there is the cinematography and the score by Nico Muhly. The editing of the love making scenes between the boy Michael and the woman Hanna brings us into their shared bed. There is nothing pornographic or exploitative about these scenes. They remind me of my youth, of those lost afternoons, lost in my first love, the slow love making, the all consuming passion, and the isolation.

This is not a film that gives us answers to the moral quandaries that we face. Instead it is a quiet meditation on the fact that we are faced with turning points, and why we act or don't act can change the course of our lives. And the film is about secrets, and the hierarchy of those secrets, how idiosyncratic that hierarchy might be. Yes, the film dragged at points, but the film is yet another step taking us out of the simplistic thinking that has so plagued American society. We need to retrain ourselves so that we can tolerate the subtle, the complex, and the moral ambiguity of real life.

The Reader has quite a few Oscar nominations for such a difficult film, yet this year, difficult films are the stars of the Academy Awards. In addition to Winslet's nomination for best actress, The Reader is up for : best cinematography, best direction, best picture, and best adapted screenplay.