I avoided this flick for a few weeks because I wasn't really in the mood for a Nazi, 2nd World War, witchunt type of movie. But in the end it was either Kate Winslet or movies like Tornado (which IMDB doesn't even rate) and Finding Lenny.
I was surprised how much The Reader made me feel. It really takes you places. I've had a couple of relationships with older women and The Reader gives the right amount of empathy, passion and raw but not over-delivered sexuality to the whole process. A lot of credit has to go to Winslet - she won an Oscar for her performance - for stripping herself down not only in terms of clothing, but in terms of her persona. The flick is at times incredibly bleak, but always intriguing.
Michael: I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love, will sharpen it, will give it spice. I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: "Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love."
A strange, unsolicited memory floated up to me whilst watching The Reader. When I was a small boy I developed a voracious appetite for reading. It started at the age of about 6 or 7 with Enid Blyton. The Famous Five, Secret Seven, the Adventure stories, and then I ventured into Franklin W. Doxon's Hardy Boys and Willard Price's outdoor adventure stories.
From there I went into everything else - biographies, classical fiction (I loved Wuthering Heights) and at the age of 13 I was so inspired by what I was reading, I started to write. By 15 I was ensconced in a novel (titled Versatile Flying Secrets - a mixture of Highlander, Star Wars, Braveheart and the French Open) which took me two years to write. But I digress.
As a youngster I was the most well read of my peers, and in junior school when lessons were over in some classes (if not all) the teacher would settle down to marking and hand the class over to a reader. I was one of them and eventually I was unanimously elected as the class favorite - mostly because I did not get stuck on words and could explain the meaning of most and so we could move swiftly through one exciting story after another. I remember the books of those times: The Day of the Triffids, Buchan's The 39 Steps, Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals.
The art of reading means you have to anticipate not only the flow and cadence of the writer, but also sense the ethos with which he has imbued his story. You have to represent this in the tone and levity (or lack of in one's voice). It is an incredible compliment to have readers/listeners accept your interpretation. One feels quite a special sense that although one is not the writer, one is a step closer to the magical place the writer sat or stood (the place in his or heart or mind) when he or she wrote it. And this says something important about the acuity of one's perceptions. At least, I like to think so.
The flick made me think that I would love to take my favorite books from right now [The Hours is one] and read the first or a handful of pages and record these as individual podcasts. I've recently recorded my voice and am not happy with the result, so I will probably have to practise in order to be satisfied that the voice does justice to the text (and that the exercise is worth doing in the first place). So that is something I intend to do as another ongoing project on this site.
The other aspect that rang a bell was that when I visited Germany in the late 1990's I visited the camp known as Dachau. Winslet is right to say that you can visit these camps but you get nothing from them. Nothing comes out of them. My experience was the same. The photographs spoke to me more than the clean barracks or the brickwork (which looked brand new). And photos can be found in newspapers or books or online.
I was surprised not to feel the ghosts in an area that had seen so many people die. Even the ovens looked less used than an ordinary pizza oven, giving the impression much had probably been rebuilt, replastered etc.
And I had a very strange experience in Munch, and quite unpleasant. When I left England, I shaved my head with a slight perception in my head of wanting to fit into the German modicum of neatness and precision. One day I went walking around Munich and dressed entirely in black. It was one of the most uncomfortable days I have spent in a foreign city anywhere, before or since. A lot of people shot me strange looks, and it wasn't long before I realised they thought I was a skinhead, or a Nazi. This was crushing experience for an expat South African who has to deal with people who commonly think so he must be a racist once you've told them where you're from.
When I arrived at my friend's flat in Dietramzellerstrasse and I told him how the ordinary German's had stared at me he laughed. In Germany there is still a definite feeling of guilt and unease about the atrocities during WWII. Coincidentally, South Africans carry around similar but obviously different burdens. Some countries of course have no political burdens at all, such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, which is why these are the favored destinations for so many immigrants.
The Reader is a riveting but tragic story. It is a story that demonstrates how small substleties can steer entire lives, and how our stern judgements are sometimes salt in already deep enough wounds. It is also one of the most intelligent movies out there, so I highly recommend you catch it while you can.
8.5/10
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