movie - the reader

[spoiler alert. the plot of this movie will be revealed.]

the reader is a triumph of art in its never ending quest to expose and refine the duality of man. it may be true that only those who possess the most refined sense of empathy will understand the conundrum that is the reader and the richness of the film lay in its ability to explore the gray territory between good and bad or right and wrong. its genius arrives when it forces the viewer to reevaluate the area they have staked out as their own personal moral right.

hanna shmitz, (kate winslet,) is alone in the world and she is illiterate. in the way she carries herself and takes care of herself one can see that she has learned how to get along in the world. she has a set of values she lives by and while she is ashamed of her inability to read, she is careful not to let it be an obstacle to her own ability to pay rent.

at the outset of the film, hanna works on a tram and she is obviously meticulous in everything she does. she meets michael berg, (david kross than ralph fiennes later in life,) when he happens into her doorway one day ill. hanna is duty-oriented. upon seeing michael hunched over on a bench in the entranceway to her apartment, she strides past him with purpose and returns seconds later with a bucket of water to splash the vomit away from the boy's feet.

as it turns out, michael has scarlet fever and ends up bedridden for a few months after which, he comes by to thank hanna, at which point the two embark on an affair. it is michael's first sexual experience and will color his entire life. hanna holds no illusions about the relationship but she treats it respectfully, giving michael what she can in tenderness and experience in return for the satisfaction he gives her. she also has michael read aloud to her regularly as he is something of a star pupil in school and in this way the plot twist that is hanna's illiteracy is revealed.

flash forward 20-plus years to germany's truth and reconciliation trials where hanna is on trial for her role as an ss guard at auschwitz and moreover for her involvement in allowing a church to burn to the ground with 300 prisoners locked inside.

the moral dilemma comes in understanding who hanna really is. she admits to her role at the trial because she sees it as just that; a role. she did not decide anything. she merely accepted a job, which came to her as just reward for her having performed so admirably on the trams. (moving into an office environment was inconceivable for her because of her inability to read so she quits the job rather than admitting to her handicap and finds the ss guard job.) hanna has learned that in this world she must take care of herself which is to say, she must have a job she can perform well enough to keep her paycheck coming in. so monthly when she was told to pick 10 prisoners to come in who she knew were going to the gas chamber, instead of torturing herself over it, she simply picked 10. she saw this as her job. she saw herself as a pawn and she certainly felt powerless to do anything about the larger scale situation.

what is so ghastly about what happened in nazi germany is the simple fact that so many allowed it to happen. one of michael's classmates in law school finds hanna's behavior entirely normal in as much as he proclaims that all germans were complicit in genocide. he explodes in the classroom condemning all of the older generation for doing nothing, a behavior he rightly finds shameful and disgraceful.

americans may find this movie particularly poignant in the wake of the invasion of iraq. somewhere near 50% of us did not support this war but ultimately we were powerless to do anything to stop it from occurring. so instead we went on with our lives. we may have complained but at the same time, we went to work every day. we went to the movies. life went on. hundreds of thousands of iraqis were dying. thousands of our own countrymen were dying or being maimed. some were being tortured or suffering extraordinary rendition.

ultimately you must accept two opposing ideas into your brain when you watch the reader. hanna shmitz' behavior is disgraceful. she should have stopped working that job. she should have died a violent and cruel death rather than continue to do what she did. and, while this would be an appropriate self judgment for her, it is really not for us to judge her. what do we know about what it is like to be alone and illiterate? what do we know about the need to survive and the fear of not being paid regularly? hitler is responsible for the holocaust. hitler and goring and eichmann and the others who made decisions. yes, someone like hanna shmitz would be complicit but given her station in life, only the most angry and abrasive could withold empathy.

so in the end you have to see hanna sympathetically, as someone who accepted the world she lived in on the terms with which it met her daily. her human frailty most poignantly displayed by her inability to read is perhaps the driving force in her life. in her relationship with michael she was both soft and hard but always human, always respectful. at the same time you have to see hanna as despicable. you have to see her that way because it is important for the human race to learn from past mistakes lest we be doomed to repeat them. you absolutely have to keep it your brain even while feeling for hanna that she has made an unspeakable error of judgment, even if on some level she was ill-equipped to do better.

similarly, at the end of this movie you can walk out feeling both wretched for having taken in such a dark and loathsome film, (it is all of that as it will make your gut ache in moments,) and at the same time you can escape this film marvelling at the complexity of life and the wondrous achievements of our highest art form. in two hours the reader will move you in several different directions all the while revealing to your inner self your own world view. like any great art, the idea is movement. the idea is to push at self-imposed boundaries, to spur growth and cause change. in that way, the reader is an extraordinary accomplishment.