The Reader

En 2008, Kate Winslet a joué dans deux films et c’est comme si elle était en compétition avec elle-même pour la meilleure performance. Dans Les Noces rebelles, elle joue magnifiquement, mais le scénario est minable. Dans The Reader, tant la prestation que le scénario sont magnifiques. Mais si je devais n’évaluer que l’actrice, je dirais qu’elle est un poil – je n’ai pas dit « à poil » :-) – meilleure dans Les Noces rebelles. On peut d’ailleurs la comparer directement à Meryl Streep dans Doute, sauf que là, Meryl Streep l’emporte plus que d’un poil. Son personnage de bonne sœur a évoqué en moi une vague d’émotion, de la colère et pratiquement de la haine, là où Hanna, la contrôleuse de tramway, m’a laissé de marbre jusqu’au moment où elle est en prison et reçoit des cassettes de Michael. Doute a également captivé mon attention pour une caractéristique distincte : il semble s’articuler telles deux œuvres distinctes liées par deux personnages centraux, l’une étant un récit raisonnablement érotique sur les amours entre un jeune homme et une femme adulte et l’autre, un drame se déroulant au tribunal et dans une prison. Très correct dans l’ensemble. (02/03/2009)

A nice drama with a leisurely start and a very intense second half and ending. Kate Winslet has outdone herself with a performance that is clearly Oscar worthy. I also appreciate that the film doesn’t pass any categorical judgement, leaving the viewers free to impart their own absolution. The topics The Reader deals with are so strong and deep that, thanks to the above mentioned liberty, they will stay in your head for a lot longer than five minutes after the screening. I also want to praise the music, it’s not obtrusive but still striking enough for me to notice it (which is far from the rule for me). (26/01/2009)

It is, of course, excellent that attention has been drawn to the subject of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials from 1963 to 1965. Kate Winslet is an interesting choice for the lead role, and although we know she can act, she is after all too familiar to us for such complex characters. It would be interesting to see a good German actress in this role. Bernhard Schlink wrote a book that aroused many emotions, questions, and discussions. The many themes that run through it like a red thread seemingly fit together only with difficulty. But the opposite is true. Very controversial are the parts depicting interviews with law students of the 1960s and the final meeting with a former victim. Personally, I find the whole tone of the novel's fiction extremely problematic, but that's not Schlink's fault, it's the problem of the general phenomenon of denazification. The course of history cannot be changed by punishing the weakest link. Note that it is impossible to deal with the Holocaust in this way. (12/01/2020)

If this film was supposed to be primarily a drama about responsibility, guilt, and punishment, it failed to evoke the relevant emotions and catharsis in me. The film combines two problems: the relationship between a 15-year-old boy and a woman from an older generation, and the conflict arising from the young woman's involvement in war crimes. I am not familiar with the book, so I cannot assess to what extent the film's shortcomings stem from the literary material or the screenplay. However, some motifs and layers of the characters' relationship remained hidden or failed to captivate me. The stronger problem in general seemed to be the relationship between two unequal sexual partners. The genesis of this relationship is not particularly shocking, although it is certainly one of the few taboos that still exist today. Post-war Germany had to deal with the problem that millions of men had fallen on the front lines, so women found various ways to help themselves. The aspect of crime and punishment does not work for two reasons: firstly because the protagonist's involvement in the crimes is unquestionable, and secondly, because this line is overshadowed by the bizarreness of the whole plot and the main character. The characters seemed too flat to me, and the film felt dragged out. Overall impression: 55%. (24/10/2010)

The part that takes place in the fifties is proof that pedophile soft porn and a story don’t go well together. The voyage through the sixties raises hopes that it would turn to some burning questions regarding collective guilt, the need to find a scape goat and to hypocritical verdicts for “the nation’s peace of mind". But no more than two or three sentences are uttered about that. And the final twenty years are good, but nothing more than just good. It’s a crying shame that the Germans didn’t adapt the book themselves. At a time when German cinema is experiencing a historic boom, when they settle up accounts with one historical skeleton in the closet after another, it would fit beautifully into their clutch of movies. They certainly have the actors for it (in fact apart from Kate and Ralph everybody’s German here). Plus it would be in German which would significantly add to the authenticity. And the English with a would-be German accent is torture to the ears. (24/04/2009)