I came to this movie expecting not to like it; I'm tired of holocaust films and generally avoid them, and I've even grown a little weary of Kate Winslet undressing. Also, this is a film that received decidedly mixed reviews. So I am a little sheepish to admit that I was won over.
The affair between the thirty-something Hanna Schmidt (Winslet) and 15-year-old Michael Berg (Richard Cross) is obscure in its motivation--hers, not his--but pretty convincing as it unfolds, and seems to evolve into real affection (but with lots of sex, all tastefully photographed). During their affair Hannah has Michael read to her, mostly from the classics, whenever they're not having sex. Michael embraces this role almost as eagerly as he does her. Stupidly, he never figures out that she is illiterate. The reason for her illiteracy is never made clear, just as the reason for her taking up a 15-year-old lover is obscure. Much has been made of her illiteracy as a symbol of Germany's moral blindness in the Nazi era, and their relationsip as representing the moral complexity of the relations between War-era Germans and the post-war generation. This may be more explicit in Bernhard Schlink's novel. What strikes me about this central relationship is the failure of love, or more specifically, the failure of the moral commitment inherent in love. Hannah deserts her boy-lover because she is threatened by a promotion in her job (tram conductor) that will put her in an office and expose her illiteracy. She packs up and leaves her apartment with no word of explanation to Michael, leaving him to draw his own devastating conclusions about the efficacy of his love. However, Michael echoes her failure when he attends a war-crimes tribunal as a young law student, and discovers Hannah's past as an Auschwitz guard. He fails to offer evidence of her illiteracy that would have at least lightened her sentence, even after his law professor and mentor has advised that he has a moral obligation to do so. We can only surmise that he is embarassed to admit that he had an affair with this hapless Nazi. Later when Hannah is in prison he fails to even visit her, and though her sends her tapes of books he reads aloud, he is decidely cool toward taking any responsibility for her as she is about to be released.
Kate Winslet deserves her Oscar for Hannah, a difficult woman who never expresses herself directly. What we learn in the courtroom is that she is naive to the point that her cannier codefendants take advantage of her. That is not apparent in her affair with Michael. We discover another aspect of her character as she teaches herself to read, now in her 60s, in prison. I was not convinced by Richard Cross as the 15-year-old Michael--he seemed goony and not someone who would inflame the desire of Hannah. He is better at as an early 20's law student. Two small but notable performances are by Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) as Michael's law professor and a double performance by the wonderful but rarely seen Lena Olin (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) as a holocaust victim testifying at Hannah's trial in the 1970's and as her daughter in the 1990's who has a devasting conversation with the grown-up Michael in her New York apartment. That uncomfortable interview may be the film's best moment. Ralph Fiennes does what he has to do as the emotionally retarded adult Michael. (I saw Fiennes in London in Coriolanus; he really can act and needs to extend his movie range.)
Here's something that bothers me: the characters in the film don't speak German, but speak English with a German accent. That seems awkward, but I can live with it. But when Michael reads Hannah Huck Finn he does Jim's dialog in Twain's slave dialect, how does that translate into German exactly?
But I got over it and found the whole film compelling; I don't recall ever getting up from my chair.
