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How could it offer answers and be "real"?

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


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