After five Academy Award nominations, Kate Winslet finally took home the coveted statue on her sixth try, for her portrayal of Hanna Schmitz in The Reader. Based on the 1995 German novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink, the film adaptation was written by David Hare (The Hours) and directed by Hare’s frequent collaborator, Stephen Daldry (The Hours). As a side note, The Reader was produced by Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, both of whom died before the film was released.
The action transitions between 1995 and 1958, when 15-year-old Michael Berg (David Kross) first comes under the spell of Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), the stern but attentive woman who showed him some kindness after he was felled by Scarlet Fever. Hanna first meets him after he vomits at her door. She cleans him up a bit and makes sure he gets home safely. Once he recovers, Michel returns to the woman’s apartment (he doesn’t know her name yet), with a bouquet of flowers as a gesture of thanks. He is only 15 and she is 36; however, this day and for weeks afterward, the two engage in an obsessive sexual relationship. Hanna makes little affectation to genuinely loving Michael, whom she refers to as “kid.” Though Michael has a huge crush on Hanna, while he may understand as love, at 15; it would be a mistake to refer to it as such. He is a young boy exploring his sexuality for the first time.
While Hanna certainly enjoys the sexual part of the affair, it seems more important to her that he read aloud to her. “Reading first. Sex afterwards.” The scenes between the two have a great a great deal of sensuality and nudity, which seems right, because for them, there is little else. This is not a couple that is going to the movies or out to dinner; what they share in Hanna’s small apartment is all they have. Over the course of their summer relationship, he reads several books to her, including, The Odyssey and Chekhov’s The Lady with the Dog.
Months later, Hanna suddenly leaves without a trace. The distance between them had been growing as Michael had been spending more time with his school friends. He feels guilty and believes it was something he did that caused her departure. The memory of Hanna taints all his other relationships with women. Eight years later, Michael is now a law student. He enters a courtroom in session as part of his studies and discovers Hanna in a group of Nazi prison guards being charged with murder. Developments in the trial make one of her secrets clear to him and might help explain why she became a prison guard. The secret might also clear her of some of the atrocities she’s being accused of. Michael says nothing.
Now a grown man, Michael (Ralph Fiennes), lives a fairly lonely, desolate life. Long divorced from the mother of his only child, we see him in a scene after a night with a woman; he treats her politely but there’s no affection or lingering tenderness towards her. He clearly has never recovered from his relationship with Hanna and its subsequent aftershocks. While the enormity of her misdeeds far outweighs his, they both carry tremendous guilt. He carries the shame of not revealing Hanna’s secret to the court during her trial. That one decision, made when he was still a fairly young man, clearly affected how Michael conducted his life and related to other people.
I suppose it would be easy to write The Reader off as a film about Hanna’s Nazi past and her sexual relationship with Michael–a sort of Apt Pupil meets Last Tango in Paris–but doing that sells the film short. The Reader is much deeper; it’s really more about Michael’s attempt to try and understand exactly what happened. While he can’t forgive Hanna’s crimes, he needs to try and understand her reasons for doing what she did.
The Reader is a weighty film that will likely stay with viewers for a long time. It’s hard not to ponder, what would you do if you were in Hanna’s position in Hitler’s Germany? Would you turn down an offer to join the S.S. or join the majority of your fellow citizens? David Hare’s script is tight and thought provoking, while Kate Winslet’s fierce, unapologetic yet vulnerable portrayal of Hanna Schmitz, is worthy of every award she received.
The Reader comes to Blu-ray in 1.85:1 1080p widescreen, with the Genius/Weinstein Company using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on the film. Two-time Oscar winning Director of Photography Chris Menges (The Killing Fields) and eight-time Oscar nominee, cinematographer Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men) keep the film’s look pretty flat with the exception of Hanna and Michael’s brief summer vacation. There is some color and multi-dimensional feel. The color palette is subdued, with very little natural light in Hanna’s flat or in the courtroom/jail cell, and this is reproduced accurately. Blacks are decent, but there appears to be some digital noise reduction around Michael in some of the early sequences where he first meets Hanna. It’s not a distraction, as The Reader is a solid transfer.
A Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround track is the main option here to go along with English and French Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks. There’s not a lot for it to do, as the film is dialogue-driven. Speaker panning is evident on scenes like when the trams come from left to right, but there’s no real immersive experience that you can point to. The dialogue sounds strong in the center channel and I didn’t have to adjust the volume at all and the overall result is a quality sonic experience.
The Reader contains a solid slate of special features:
• Eleven Deleted Scenes (42:15) Some are extended sequences, like Michael trying to find a reason for Hanna’s abandonment but one scene, where Michael hitchhikes to Auschwitz and has a discussion with an individual who could be a former SS officer living anonymously, is very compelling and worth watching.
• Adapting a Masterpiece (23:05) is essentially a “making of” piece, where everyone discusses their particular attraction to the source material, and the crew’s thoughts on the actors and their performances (particularly Winslet’s). Daldry talks about using a German film crew on the production and the benefits of using a German cast Daldry talks about how the Pollack and (especially) Minghella deaths impacted everyone on set and the themes that are touched on in the film. Schlink shares his personal reflections as well.
• A Conversation with David Kross and Stephen Daldry (9:47) doesn’t start out as that, with both being interviewed individually, but they show up in one room together and Daldry asks Kross about his thoughts on the film and what his family might think of it. (The sex scenes weren’t filmed until he turned 18.)
• The Art of Aging Hanna Schmitz (12:50) shows Winslet in the makeup chair as she gets ready to have prosthetics put on as the elder Hanna.
• A New Voice (4:08) examines the contributions of composer Nico Muhly to the film.
• Coming to Grips with the Past (7:21) is an interesting look at German production designer Brigitte Broch’s initial reluctance to do the film, followed by what she tried to accomplish in the production.
• Theatrical Trailer (2:33) rounds out the special features.
