Arts & Entertainment

Guilt And Understanding

Tom Tugend
Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.

T

hose who gulped down The
Reader in one sitting when
the English translation of the
German book came out eight years ago
will need no inducement to see the movie.
They may carp about some structural
changes; but where it counts, the film is
faithful to the spirit of the original. As a
bonus, the performances are of such high
caliber that Ralph Fiennes", who was nomi-
nated for an Oscar for his role as the sin-
ister Nazi commandant in Schindler's List,
ranks as only the third-best actor among
the movie's principals.
But to the uninitiated, the film will
be a harder sell. It asks us to look at the
Holocaust from the complex perspective
of the immediate postwar generation of
Germans, who were not guilty of their par-
ents' crimes but must live with the shame
and horror of the aftermath.
Michael Berg is a 15-year-old schoolboy
in a small German university town in the
late 1950s who, by chance, meets Hanna
Schmitz, a 36-year-old trolley conductor
who quickly initiates the "kid" into the
mysteries of sex.
In return, Michael reads to Hanna
from works ranging from Homer to Mark
Twain, which she enjoys so much that
she lays down the rule: "Reading first, sex
afterward."
(In German, the book's more telling title
is Der Vorleser, someone who reads aloud
to another person.)
One day, Hanna disappears without
a trace. A few years later, Michael has
become a law student and as a class
assignment attends one of the trials of
lesser war criminals, mostly concentration
camp guards, which opened the eyes of
many young Germans of the early 1960s.
Hanna is a defendant among a group
of female SS guards accused of letting
Jewish women and children burn to death
in a locked church during a World War II
bombing raid.
Not only does she not deny her complic-
ity, but she is manipulated by the other
SS women into the role of ringleader.
Although this testimony is false, she does
not deny the charge because to do so
would force her to reveal a lifelong secret

Photo by Mel in da Sue Gordon © 2008. The Weinstein Co.

The new film The Reader, based on German author
Bernhard Schlink's bestselling novel, probes moral questions.

Kate Winslet (Hanna Schmitz) and David Kross (Michael) star in The Reader.

The film has received Golden Globe nominations for Best Picture-Drama, Best
Supporting Actress (Winslet), Best Director (Stephen Daldry) and Best Screenplay
(David Hare).

she considers even more shameful than
her wartime deeds.
Bernhard Schlink, the German author
of The Reader, clearly posited Hanna and
Michael as stand-ins for the wartime and
postwar generations of his countrymen.
Thanks to the talents of Schlink,
screenwriter David Hare, director Stephen
Daldry and a superb cast, the protago-
nists emerge not as abstract generational
symbols but as highly complex human
beings. (Two of the original producers,
Anthony Minghella and Sidney Pollack,
died between conception and completion
of the film.)
The stars' names above the title are Kate
Winslet and Fiennes. Winslet — far out-

shining her famed turn in Titanic — ages
amazingly from a ravenously sexual
woman to a gray-haired, weary prison
inmate.
Fiennes plays Michael Berg as a lawyer
in his 50s, reflecting on his youthful affair
and returning to visit Hanna in prison. It
is an important, and well-acted, part but
relatively brief.
Throughout most of the film, the central
figure is the young Michael, from adoles-
cence to young manhood, played, in truly
remarkable style, by an unknown 18-year-
old German actor, David Kross.
Schlink, who was born one year before
the end of World War II, is now a judge,
law professor and part-time novelist and

knows the gulf between his generation
and those of his father's and grandfather's
firsthand.
This reporter had a leisurely lunch con-
versation with Schlink when he visited Los
Angeles in 2000, and the author posed the
question then:
How do you reconcile the natural love
and respect you bear toward your parents
when you learn that they committed hor-
rible crimes at worst, or tolerated them
silently at best?
As Schlink's alter ego, the young Michael
Berg, puts it as he watches his former
lover in the defendant's chair, charged
with war crimes: "I wanted simultane-
ously to understand Hanna's crime and to
condemn it. But it was too terrible for that.
When I tried to understand it, I had the
feeling I was failing to condemn it. When
I condemned it, as it must be condemned,
there was no room for understanding."
At no point does the author, his book
or the film try to soften the horror of
the Holocaust. Most telling in the movie
is a long, silent walk by young Michael
through the remnants of a death camp,
with its narrow bunks, crematoria and
mountains of discarded shoes.
Toward the end, Hanna leaves her mea-
ger savings to the only Jewish woman to
survive the church burning. Can this ges-
ture redeem her?
Never, said Schlink; there cannot be any
absolution for Hanna or for Hitler's gen-
eration of Germans.
The Reader has been a New York Times
and international bestseller and has been
translated into 40 languages, including
Hebrew.
We asked Schlink why a book of some
200 pages, written without literary flour-
ishes, would evoke such global popularity
and devotion.
"I think readers like to be confronted
with such complex problems;' he said.
"Too often they are under-challenged."
Movie viewers, who are rarely required
to strain their thought processes, will find
The Reader a worthy moral, intellectual
and emotional challenge.

❑

The Reader opens Thursday, Dec. 25,
at the Maple Theatre in Bloomfield
Township. (248) 263-2111.

December 25 • 2008

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