The Reader is about a man who was a victim of statutory rape, which makes him unable to have any healthy and intimate relationships with family, friends and lovers as an adult. To exacerbate his psychological trauma, he discovers that his rapist was a Nazi. How could such a hot woman be a Nazi AND worse? Actually she may not be guilty of worse than a Nazi, but he also feels condemned when he does not reveal important details of their relationship because of his shame. Being silent to help a prison camp guard who raped you be found not guilty for willfully exterminating her Jewish victims is similar to being embarrassed about being illiterate so you not only become a Nazi, you also become a guard at one of the most notorious death camps in history, but oops, she did not mean to kill all those women, y’all.
The Reader is a film adaptation of a popular German novel. The Reader is supposed to be a metaphor about how the generation after Hitler’s regime had to negotiate dealing with the sins of the previous generation then how that generation was unable to nurture and bond with the subsequent generation. The eternally luminous Kate Winslet plays the hot Nazi Hanna. The compelling Ralph Fiennes plays the adult victim. German actor David Kross plays the young victim. By watching The Reader, I proved that I would watch Winslet and Fiennes in anything, but due to no fault of the brilliant cast, watching is not enjoying.
Going into The Reader, I thought that she was a Nazi in hiding in the United Kingdom, but The Reader takes place in Germany. The author of The Reader wanted Fiennes and Winslet, two British icons, to play the leads because duh, they are two of the best actors in the world. Kross, an actual German, had to learn English to be cast as a German. I am hoping that this decision is purely mercenary and not unimaginable levels of self-loathing.
I don’t have a problem with a cast speaking English in a German film although other films have made two film versions in the native tongue of the characters and in English for marketing purposes. Other than the constant post WWII construction and exposition, based on the leads and the language spoken, I would have no idea that this film took place in Germany or was about Germany without literally living in Germany and knowing the locations. Why am I the only one who thinks that this decision undermines the entire premise of The Reader? For me, it rendered The Reader not a broader metaphor about generational difficulties in Germany, but an everyman movie about the effect that early relationships have on the future and how both characters are frozen in time and unable to move forward.
I am frustrated by media characterizations of sex between older women and underage men as relationships. You have to watch Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to find media representations of men or boys being raped. The news gives these women the People magazine treatment, and The Reader is just part of this problem. Hanna got a taste for power and abuse in the camps, and the real legacy of Nazi Germany is that if you don’t have a minority to push around, even if there is some benefit to the parasitic relationship, you will victimize those who are like you, but vulnerable. I actually know people who are the children of Nazis who became victims of incest. After WWII, neighbors became vicious to each other. I suppose that The Reader got something inadvertently right: Hanna as a symbol of an incestuous motherland that abuses her children.
The saddest part of The Reader is how both Fiennes and Winslet are frozen in the past and unable to move on. The most dynamic sequence in The Reader depicts Fiennes recording his dramatic readings and Hanna rapturously listening. Reading and listening are imbued with a sexual passion recreated by imagination that gets burst upon seeing each other after many decades. Hanna says, “That’s over then.” The Reader’s real tragedy is that they will never be as young, beautiful or even want to have sex with the other person again.
The Reader is basically appealing because of Ralph Fiennes’ voice and Winslet’s breasts. The Reader is an existential crisis about how evil can coexist with beauty. I suppose that it would have been asking too much to have The Reader be honest and have Fiennes breathlessly utter the line, “But her titties.” I think that I am the only one in the world that would not recommend The Reader. I have zero interest in reading the book.