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Ralph Fiennes, though he splits time with the actor (noticeably inferior to Fiennes) portraying his character at an earlier age.
Winslet's character is a surly, depressed young woman who seduces an adolescent. Later, after their affair has ended, she is arrested and found to have been an Auschwitz prison guard directly responsible for the deaths of 3 hundred inmates.
Now, of course, the camera loves Winslet's pale, pre-Raphaelite face and it is impossible to see it and her shapely unclad form repeatedly over the course of a good 1/2 hour of intimacy (you'd need to have moved on to your toes to count them all) and not fall a little in love with her.
So, what purpose all of this and then reveal her to have been a callous, indifferent murdereress? The idea that her illiteracy somehow had a role in her detachment from human suffering is ludicrous. If it is to argue that perfectly ordinary people can become monsters... well, that isn't exactly a novel idea worthy of several hours of a viewer's time.
What's even worse is that the producers think it important to continue to pound away at the German population. Most Nazis now are long gone as are pretty much the entire generation. The argument that we cannot be allowed to forget is nonsensical: has any American forgotten 9/11? What purpose would making ten films a year about it serve, especially 70 years in the future? Do the Chinese and Russians feel it necessary to lacerate themselves over the pogroms of Mao and Stalin (which were far, far greater in number, not that it makes the crime worse)?
Follow Ups:
the more I read about this film, the less I'm inclined to see it, even though I've liked Kate in many of her past films.
I thought this was a stunning, brilliantly acted, and emotionally very engaging film. I can't even begin to count the ways I think you've misread this movie.
E, you somehow think a woman's illiteracy has any impact on her participating in the killing of 300 people? You think it's believable she would take a 16 year sentence in excess of the others because she was.... shy about admitting it?
Oh, COME ON!
I bet next you'll be saying "Defiance" is a rousing good thriller!
But for one thing I'm probably generally more willing to go the route of a willing suspension of disbelief than are you. I'm not typically looking for hardcore reality when I watch a film, even in a case like this where the presentation overall is pretty naturalistic. I try to accept it on it's own terms. The fact is that there are exponentially more things you DON'T like than is true for me.
How do I know if such an internal justification or motivation would work? If the Holocaust hadn't happened it would be hard for me to imagine that it could. Although I've not read it, there's a book that caused a ruckus in Germany a few years back that was called "Hitler's Willing Executioners." It examined the tendency of the German populace to go along with and even endorse the prevailing treatment of Jews. Among such an array of "willing executioners" I can see that one or two could manifest the combination of the stupidity and craving for higher things that Hannah Schmitz embodied. Her story begins, for me, as a portrait of a person who was *never whole.* Even though she proved smart enough to eventually learn to read there are ways in which she either blinded herself to the truth because of realizing on some level how horrific the truth was, or she had gaps in her basic intelligence that made it impossible for her to figure it all out. I am also able to "see" her illiteracy as a metaphor for a deeper brand of moral and cultural illiteracy. Both literature and film often work in that kind of metaphorical way that complicates the question of whether something is "realistic" or not.
As I've said before about music, I prefer to try and find the things in a piece of music or a story that *do* work and give me something to grab hold of so I can have the maximum experience possible from these varied opportunities. I prefer to be an absorbing sponge than a sponge that's squeezing out its own liquid.
art or which treat serious topics; this film, obviously, has both goals.
The horror of the "Jewish question" is not that Germans were "illiterate" but that very ordinary people became so calloused, fearful, and insensitive that they willingly either allowed mass murder to occur or actively to participate. It must be noted that the Germans aren't alone in this century. Russians, Chinese, Chileans, Argentinians, Cambodians, Turks, and assorted African peoples all have participated in mass killings over prolonged periods of time--- of their own fellow citizens. I think it fair to say there is something in human nature which makes this possible and possibly inevitable once several factors come into play. This film offered no answers, didn't ask the correct questions, and even misled.
I think it also fails as art because it must be true, at least to its own world.
Now that I think a bit more about the Fiennes character, it seems quite ridiculous, too. Take all the time to record, over many years, and eschew any meeting or closeness? A nice melodramatic touch but utterly divorced from any possible reality.
I think one of the strengths of the film is that it doesn't even try.
This is as much about ordinary people (or an ordinary person) becoming (or being) so calloused and insensitive that they allow or participate in mass murder, as you can get. She was thoroughly ordinary (it takes, and there are, all kinds).
And her illiteracy wasn't an excuse for the killing that she participated in but it was an aspect of her being that effected how she operated. She chose the girls for killing in the camp at least in part because they could potentially know her secret after reading to her but she would have chosen people no matter what and if you examined everyone's choosing criteria you'd doubtless find all sorts of quirks.
And her illiteracy had nothing to do with letting the women in the church burn. How much more banal can you get than the "we couldn't let them out because we were responsible for them and they'd have been running loose" excuse. Add in her defense of "What would you have done?" (to the judge) and it does get to the heart (and the truly disturbing nature) of the banality of evil story. It's all much simpler if the people involved are sociopaths or full on murderers.
In the end it's a love story... Fiennnes' time recording the books was based on his love for her. His not coming to see her was based on his disgust with what she did. He was also confused about how he could feel so much, so deeply for someone who was capable of such terrible things. He also seemed to want to believe in some kind of redemption.
She obviously had guilt about what she did. She wept when he brought her to the church and she killed herself rather than go back into the world. It's quite possible that besides being ashamed of her illiteracy, she was willing to take the wrap for the church burning deaths because of that guilt.
"The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
conjecture about her, in her most important motivations.
Clearly, the director made one critical fault: he didn't portray, in a visual medium, the pivotal scene, i.e. the barn burning. Kind of like if "Valkyrie" left out the bunker actual blasting. Allowing Winslet to show us her feelings, would have made us understand and care for her a tad more, perhaps. I know, I know, leaving it vague allows us to imagine it. But that's a cop out.
*
:-)
Thanks for being so civil.
Really.
.
"The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Winslet as cold fish, with the "just following orders" defense of her wartime life. Fiennes and young German actor as insanely obsessively consumed by this mysterious creature. None of it made much sense to me. None of it interested me. I found The Wrestler emotionally engaging. I felt for Randy the Ram. I didn't feel anything for anyone in The Reader. YMMV and I guess it does.
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