The Reader (2008); drama film review

Poster artwork for the drama film The Reader.

Generational Guilt Conflicts With Lasting Love by Linh

Director Stephen Daldry and screenwriter David Hare have remained faithful to the book upon which his Oscar-nominated film The Reader is based. The Reader reflects the emotional depth and thought-provoking material of Bernhard Schlink’s acclaimed book Der Vorleser, however some alterations were made to seek sympathy for and understanding of the character Hanna Schmitz.

The Reader tells the story of a fifteen year old boy, Michael Berg, whose love affair with a mysterious woman twice his age, Hanna Schmitz, during post World War II in Berlin, has repercussions on him later in life. He discovers her secret a decade later when he sees her defending herself in a Nazi war crimes court, but is unwilling to divulge it, as he knows she never wants it revealled.

The film is told in flashbacks where the adult Michael tells how his past experiences may have influenced and affected him in later life.

WELL READ: Hanna (Kate Winslet) listens to Michael (David Kross) read aloud in the film The Reader. Image: The Weinstein Company.

The Reader has been praised and condemned.

Many have found the film to be a moving and provocative drama, while others have seen it as representing Nazi revisionism where the character Hanna Schmitz is a metaphor for the many Germans who’ve committed terrible war crimes and her ‘secret’ is a means of freeing her from the blame and accusations of mass murder.

The Reader has sparked much debate and even some protests against the film and its producers.

The characters in The Reader are superbly portrayed and Kate Winslet's leading actress Academy Award win for this film is well deserved. Winslet plays the tram conductor Hanna Schmitz who brings young Michael Berg to his sexual awakening in the Summer of 1958.

Hanna’s mysterious and abrupt nature intrigues Michael, and she enjoys having people reading aloud to her. She shows much affection towards Michael and is very blunt and straight-forward with him, yet she could never reveal her past or her secret illiteracy to him.

Winslet is disarmingly seductive yet hard-edged as the former Nazi guard, and her German accent is convincing enough. Winslet has conquered a very complex role in her portrayal of Hanna providing soul stirring moments and fascinating insights into a woman who is seemingly merciless and unrepentant.

BIKE TRIP: Michael (David Kross) and Hanna (Kate Winslet) take a day off to go biking in the film The Reader. Image: The Weinstein Company.

Young German actor David Kross had to learn English for the role of teenager Michael Berg and he is believable as Hanna’s lover who thought he was “not good at anything”. When Hanna praises him for his reading ability after hearing him read Emilia Galotti by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Michael continues to read aloud various literature to her including The Odyssey by Homer, D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, Anton Chekhov's The Lady with the Little Dog and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Kross’s character Michael and Hanna’s love scenes were tastefully performed and filmed, and although Michael didn’t know it at the time, the intimate nature of the affair shapes the rest of their lives.

Kross brings intelligence, sensitivity and a maturity to Michael, also showing the deep internal conflict as he grapples with his love for Hanna and revealling her illiteracy. 

INTIMACY: Hanna (Kate Winslet)  is very fond of Michael (David Kross)  and enjoys his company in the film The Reader. Image: The Weinstein Company.

Ralph Fiennes gives a consummate performance as the adult Michael Berg, whose narration and flashbacks form the thrust of the film. Fiennes appears briefly in the beginning and the end, and seems moody, impatient and withdrawn, unlike the young Michael. The youthful exuberance has disappeared and in its place is a wreck whose marriage has failed, his daughter hardly knows him and even his legal work dissatisfies him.

The best scenes involve him recording audio tapes of all the books in his library for Hanna including Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, Jaws by Peter Benchley, Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Fiennes brilliantly creates a character who is a moral conundrum and at conflict with his emotions and thoughts for Hanna.

CONUNDRUM: Adult Michael (Ralph Fiennes) is still feeling the effect of Hanna's love and her secret many years later in the film The Reader. Image: The Weinstein Company.

The supporting cast also deliver fine performances including Bruno Ganz (best known for his exceptional portrayal of Adolf Hitler in [I]Downfall[/I]) as Professor Rohl who challenges Michael to question his own morals on the war crimes trial; Lena Olin as the Nazi concentration camp survivor, Rose evokes sympathy and Burghart Klaußner as the Judge presiding over Hanna Schmitz’ trial is effectively commanding.

The film is compelling with enthralling performances, on the subject matter of Nazi guilt, shame, responsibility and the delicate balance of morality. The film also echoes aspects in Bernhardt Schlink’s novel where no-one is asking for forgiveness or seeking redemption. It’s not essentially about the Holocaust but more to do with the aftermath of Germany’s involvement in the Holocaust and its effect on future generations.

MORAL MESS: Michael (David Kross) and his law lecturer Professor Rohl (Bruno Ganz) at a war crimes trial in the film The Reader. Image: The Weinstein Company.

Director: Stephen Daldry

Writers: David Hare (screenplay), Bernhard Schlink (book Der Vorleser)

Cast: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Lena Olin, Bruno Ganz, Burghart Klaußner, Jeanette Hain, Vijessna Ferkic, Karoline Herfurth

Producers: Jason Blum, Donna Gigliotti, Anthony Minghella, Henning Molfenter, Redmond Morris, Arno Neubauer, Sydney Pollack, Michael Simon de Normier, Nora Skinner, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Woebcken 

Cinematographer: Roger Deakins (Director of Photography), Chris Menges (Director of Photography)

Original Music Composer: Nico Muhly

Film Editor: Claire Simpson  

Production: Brigette Broch (Production Designer), Christian M. Goldbeck, Stefan Hauck, Yesim Zolan, Erwin Prib (Art Directors), Karin Betzler, Eva Stiebler (Set Decorators)

Costume Designer: Donna Maloney, Ann Roth

Running Time: 2 hours and 4 minutes

Revolutionary Road (2008); drama film review

Poster artwork for the drama film Revolutionary Road.

Marital Misgivings by Linh

Adapted from the acclaimed novel of the same name by Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road is set in the Summer of 1955 in America, with conformity and the symbolic happy American family existence used as a backdrop for the film. A young and happily married couple with two children, Frank and April Wheeler move to Revolutionary Road where their marriage is torn apart by their different intentions of what they wanted their lives to be – one who wants a new life away from the mundane and conformity for a life less ordinary while the other tries to maintain stability and order in their life.

TRAPPED: Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) want to break away from suburbia and live in Paris in the film Revolutionary Road. Image: Paramount Vantage, DreamWorks. 

Director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Jarhead) was encouraged by wife Kate Winslet to read the script based on Richard Yates’s novel and he loved it so much, he and Winslet worked to get the film produced. Mendes’s background as a theatre director gives the film an intimate feel as if the audience is part of the action and in the same room as the characters. Mendes directed the film in sequence and this helped to build up the tensions and allowed the slow release of emotions of the characters.

Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Frank Wheeler, the conformist and hardworking computer systems salesman who wants to be a good husband to April and dedicated father to his children. Yet, he is apprehensive of taking risks to pursue a dream which may not work out. Initially, living in Paris was his idea, but just like his father, Frank conformed to his environment and his work, so the once romantic Parisian goal became a fantasy. DiCaprio gives a powerhouse performance fraught with a myriad of emotions that manifest themselves in outbursts of either intense lovemaking or violent conduct (attempting to bash his wife and trashing his house).

Kate Winslet received a Golden Globe for her role and it was well deserved. Winslet plays the homemaker and dreamer April Wheeler whose marriage to Frank almost seems to be a fairytale until they leave the city and move to Revolutionary Road. While her acting career never took off, April’s imagination and idealistic nature persisted in her duties as mother and wife, until one day she remembered Frank saying how much he would love to go and live in Paris at any cost.

Winslet is mesmerising as the young wife who yearns for something different in life and to escape the confines of the home, while wanting to stay married to Frank. Winslet’s displays of vulnerability, misery and conviction are so well executed, her character’s emotional roller coaster becomes an interesting yet tragic ride.

SHARING WITHOUT CARING: Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) feels he can make April (Kate Winslet) happy without them moving to Paris in the film Revolutionary Road. Image: Paramount Vantage, DreamWorks.

The supporting cast are wonderful and their characters find themselves thrust aside as the marital fights between Frank and April play out in the privacy of their home.

Kathy Bates (who appeared alongside DiCaprio and Winslet in the film Titanic) is delightful as the real estate agent, Helen Givings, who sells the house on Revolutionary Road to the Wheelers and becomes their friend; Michael Shannon is brilliant as Helen’s mentally unstable son, John Giving, who steals every scene in which appears where his erratic ramblings hold some truths regarding the Wheeler’s marriage; and Kathryn Hahn is in fine form as April’s friend Milly Campbell, the seemingly perfect wife who’s happily married and a conformist to the 1950s American dream life.

Revolutionary Road is a superb insight into character studies and life during 1950s America, the effects it has on the marriage and how difficult it is to share and live a dream that’s not really your own.The film manages to recapture the era, and the sense of “hopelessness and emptiness” experienced by the characters without them understanding it, is a revelation in story-telling.

PERFECT PARTNERS: Shep Campbell (David Harbour) and his wife Milly (Kathryn Hahn) are living the American dream in the 1950s in the film Revolutionary Road. Image: Paramount Vantage, DreamWorks.

Director: Sam Mendes

Writers: Justin Haythe (screenplay), Richard Yates (novel)

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon, David Harbour, Kathryn Hahn, Zoe Kazan, Ryan Simpkins, Ty Keegan Simpkins, Jay O. Sanders

Producers: Scott Rudin, John N. Hart Jr., Bobby Cohen, Sam Mendes, David M. Thompson, Marion Rosenberg, Henry Fernaine, Nina Wolarsky, Ann Ruark, Gina Amoroso, Peter Kalmbach, Pippa Harris

Cinematographer: Roger Deakins (Director of Photography)

Original Music Composer: Thomas Newman

Film Editor: Tariq Anwar

Production: Kristi Zea (Production Designer), Teresa Carriker-Thayer, John Kasarda, Nicholas Lundy (Art Directors), Debra Schutt (Set Decorator)

Costume Designer: Albert Wolsky

Running Time: 1 hour and 55 minutes