The Reader

[Zarathustra]

Caution, massive spoilers.

Finally rented this one.

This movie really rubs me the wrong way.

Sure, it looked nice. Sure, the acting was great. But a woman burns 300 Jews alive, and we're supposed to sympathize with her because we got to see her boobs?

She's a monster. There is no narrative justification whatsoever for portraying her as anything else. And yet, the main character dutifully spends hours, days, perhaps weeks of his life recording himself reading books to her because she's illiterate and he feels sorry for her (and then decides to help her once she is released).

She obviously didn't care for anyone but herself, not even this fool boy who put so much time into doing something nice for her. Even at the end, she wasn't thankful for his sacrifice. She never said thank you. Instead, she demanded that he record more romances, and complained that he wasn't writting her back.

We're fed a constant stream of moral equivalency to make it seem like it's not crystal clear that she's a monster. One law student talks about how horrible the trial is because "everyone knew." So I suppose since most of Germany knew what was happening to the Jews, this one woman shouldn't be convicted of her crimes?

Minor plot point: I do not think she allowed herself to be put in prison because she was ashamed of her illiteracy. I think she was ashamed of burning alive 300 Jews. After all, she killed herself even though she could read by the end.

I know we all read Donaldson, who writes about characters like Angus. But this isn't fiction--at least not the setting. The Holocaust was real. This Hollywood attempt to paint it in morally ambiguous terms just makes me want to puke.

I predict that there will come a day when Hollywood decides to show us a sexy terrorist woman who worked behind the scenes to bring about 9/11. Yes, we'll all agree that she was a bad person, but--gosh!--look how pretty the cinematography is! Look how good the acting is! Such a tragic love story. Let's award this movie which sympathizes with mass murderes with our highest movie honor, the Oscar.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

I never felt any sympathy for her...beyond my views of sin...I understood the teen's confliction.

[Zarathustra]

Jacob, it's nice to hear that you didn't sympathize with her. However, don't you think the movie's main purpose was to make her crimes seem morally ambiguous? That there was a sense of injustice in her sentencing? That she was loved by this boy, so therefore she was in some sense loveable?

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

No, I don't. I think the director wanted us, the audience, to go through/feel some of the confliction the boy felt, see through his eyes/heart...kind of showing how perception taints experience. Why else take so much time setting their relationship up?

[Dragonlily]

I haven't seen the movie, but the book was about people trying to figure out personal moral ambiguities. The Holocaust was hell on earth, yes. That's a social upheaval. The author was exploring personal situations, with all the factors that go into making personal decisions while adapting to a prevailing social climate.

If I had to pick out a message from the author, it would be the choice to love unconditionally. I don't know if that made it into the movie.

[Zarathustra]

You both make good points.

But I have no problem whatsoever letting go past relationships with women, *especially* those I had at 15. And none of them burned 300 Jews alive. Just sayin'.

Perception definitely taints experience. I can see how this boy would be pissed off, but conflicted? No. I don't see it. Maybe it happens, but if it does, this movie didn't convey it for me. She never really treated him well. She was using him from the beginning. Basically, she was a selfish, moody, illiterate Nazi Jew-killing child molester. So no, I don't see how he was conflicted at all. Nor do I see why he wasted so many years trying to be nice to her.

We've all had our horny teenage experiences. There was nothing in the movie that made this affair seem significant enough for him to be this conflicted.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

Maybe you're forgetting how intense feelings and emotions were at that age...plus she's much older, sexually seasoned, had his virginity...her impact on him isn't just puppy-love.

[Zarathustra]

I think your argument is plausible in principle, in extreme circumstances, but not in this specific case. I just don't think what you're saying was up there on the screen. The love affair was so boring an uneventful, we almost turned it off before the whole Nazi thing started.

They went for one bike ride, and one swim. Besides that, they had sex and read books. Maybe I'm personalizing it a bit by comparing it to my own experience, but my own virgin-ending relationship lasted a lot longer (two years) and I couldn't care less about the girl now, after 20 years. I hope she has a good life, but if she committed mass murder, I certainly wouldn't feel sorry for her and spend years doing nice things for her.

Now if there was something unique about the whole experience, *maybe* there's some situation where my sympathy would be plausible. But I honestly can't imagine such a circumstance, and that's after seeing a movie which ostensibly should have helped me imagine exactly that possibility.

I think only fictional characters behave this way--extremely unbelievable, despicable characters. If there are humans like this, I don't want to know them, much less spend money on movies that depict them.

With that said, I respect your opinion. Art is subjective, and maybe you are more perceptive than I am when it comes to movies. Maybe you saw something up there on the screen that I missed, or maybe you have personal experience that made this movie resonate for you. I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope I haven't diminished your joy in this movie.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

I feel as you do actually...that first hour...?...couldn't it be done in twenty minutes, I thought? But then, maybe the book conveys things we don't get in the film, or maybe there just isn't that much to it.

[Montresor]

This is actually making me want to see the film. For some reason the previews didn't inspire much interest in me, though this critique makes me curious.

The book has a high reputation. Perhaps Dragonlilly can comment, but I believe the book is specifically about the generational factors in German guilt over the holocaust. It sounds intriguing.

I don't see why you can't feel sorry for mass-murderers on some level. I remember seeing a documentary on Jeffrey Dahmer and the lead detective who investigated the case confessed that he had profound sadness when he heard Dahmer died in prison, like he had lost a close friend. This was not to say that he felt Dahmer was excused for any of the enormities he had committed, of course.

[Zarathustra]

Ah, I see. If Malik hates it, it must be great.

[Montresor]

Ah, I see. If Malik hates it, it must be great.

I could say something about egocentricity here . . .

Actually, it's really just because I only heard either good or mediocre things about the film that your negative review made me want to see what it was like. From what I know of it I think there's a decent chance I'd agree with you anyway. I'm basing that off the fact that very few film adaptations of novels with complex moral themes actually manage to be credible. Both you and another poster tended to hint that the 'romance' part of the film is very brief, and I'm guessing it's not so in the book.

[Zarathustra]

Egocentricity? Me? Never!

Actually, I was just poking fun at myself. While I think I'm pretty good at spotting good story-telling, I don't consider myself an expert on movie criticism at all. Remember, I'm the sole Watch member who had fun with Land of the Lost.

You make a good point about moral complexity of a novel being translated to the big screen. I imagine that's a difficult process to get right.

The romance portion of the movie is not brief. It is lacking substance, not screen time.

[Montresor]

I finally got around to seeing this and am glad that I did so.

I wasn't expecting to like the film, yet I actually found it quite compelling. Indeed, my only real criticisms of the film were vague thoughts I had in the first half an hour (such as: "this is dragging a little", and "Ralph Fiennes seems irrelevant to the plot"). That I had completely forgotten my misgivings by the end of the movie was welcome. One definite problem I did have with the structure, however, is that it sometimes employed 'flashbacks within flashbacks', which never really works.

Personally, I did feel sympathy for the character of Hannah, despite what she was responsible for. I wasn't sorry that she got the punishment that she did, but she still managed to come across as quite human and vulnerable despite her veneer of amorality and excessive coldness. As a portrayal of the 'ordinariness' of the great many people who made up the machineries of death of the Death Camps, I think this was well done.

I understood the main character's loyalty/interest to her throughout the narrative, even though it was clear that his love for her had transformed to a sense of guilt (guilt for having loved someone like her, and for with-holding evidence which would have reduced her sentence). The film's most effective portrayal of this transition is in the body language between Feinees and Winslet when they finally meet agin in gaol, and he goes to leave.

The Holocaust is only part of this film's message/theme - the more profound one, I think, is a focus on shame. This is not only the shame of being a part of the enormities of Nazism, but also our own private shame (manifested in the film as Michael's shame at loving a war criminal, and his shame at withholding evidence; and also in Hannah's shame at feeling intellectual inferiority to everyone around her, a shame which obviously compelled her to leave her job at a factory and become an SS guard, ironically).

[Cagliostro]

They went for one bike ride, and one swim. Besides that, they had sex and read books. Maybe I'm personalizing it a bit by comparing it to my own experience, but my own virgin-ending relationship lasted a lot longer (two years) and I couldn't care less about the girl now, after 20 years. I hope she has a good life, but if she committed mass murder, I certainly wouldn't feel sorry for her and spend years doing nice things for her.

Now if there was something unique about the whole experience, *maybe* there's some situation where my sympathy would be plausible. But I honestly can't imagine such a circumstance, and that's after seeing a movie which ostensibly should have helped me imagine exactly that possibility.

I think only fictional characters behave this way--extremely unbelievable, despicable characters. If there are humans like this, I don't want to know them, much less spend money on movies that depict them.

Well, I've not seen the movie, but there are people out there that love people and defend to the teeth those that abuse them/their children, etc. I can't understand why a person would act this way, but I accept it happens. This seems a bit like taking this kind of defense that extra step, from the sound of it.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

How does it make sense to stop caring for someone because they did wrong?

[Dragonlily]

The author's point exactly. He's offering an ideal that is hard to meet.

[Zarathustra]

How does it make sense to stop caring for someone because they did wrong?

I don't know. Maybe ask the 50% of married couples who end up getting divorced. People stop caring all the time, and it rarely happens due to something as bad as mass murder.

The author's point exactly. He's offering an ideal that is hard to meet.

I really wish I'd known that was the point. I wouldn't have bothered.

It might be different (at least narratively speaking) if Winslet's character had been sympathetic in the slightest. Or if she had done something to redeem herself. Otherwise, I'm just baffled by this message of "continuing to care." Maybe the book offers better reasons for this to be believable.

[Fist and Faith]

I don't see why you can't feel sorry for mass-murderers on some level. I remember seeing a documentary on Jeffrey Dahmer and the lead detective who investigated the case confessed that he had profound sadness when he heard Dahmer died in prison, like he had lost a close friend. This was not to say that he felt Dahmer was excused for any of the enormities he had committed, of course.

My armchair-diagnosis would be a variation of Stockholm Syndrome. His job forced him to be Dahmer's captive.

Or...

The intense emotions that go along with this kind of case made the investigation a huge part of the detective for a long time. (Possibly still.) When Dahmer was killed, it was a blow to the detective's psyche. And he confused what he was feeling.

[Montresor]

I don't see why you can't feel sorry for mass-murderers on some level. I remember seeing a documentary on Jeffrey Dahmer and the lead detective who investigated the case confessed that he had profound sadness when he heard Dahmer died in prison, like he had lost a close friend. This was not to say that he felt Dahmer was excused for any of the enormities he had committed, of course.

My armchair-diagnosis would be a variation of Stockholm Syndrome. His job forced him to be Dahmer's captive.

Or...

The intense emotions that go along with this kind of case made the investigation a huge part of the detective for a long time. (Possibly still.) When Dahmer was killed, it was a blow to the detective's psyche. And he confused what he was feeling.

Those theories sound logical, and I'm sure had some bearing on his attitude. If I could remember the name of the doco, I would let you know so you could see it for yourself. What's worth keeping in mind was that the interview was filmed some years after Dahmer's murder, so the detective might be expected to have gained a more 'realistic' perspective. He spnt a lot of time talking about how Dahmer was something of a tragic figure who probably never would have killed had he found reciprocal love. That's not meant as an excuise for Dahmer (who would bother to excuse a man like that?), just that the detective clearly had empathy for a 'monster'.