Review of The Reader (2008) by Maciejc. — 14 Mar 2009

Kate Winslet deserved her Oscar, but definitely not for this movie. As noticed by Ron Rosenbaum in 'Slate', Hollywood seems to believe that if a film is about Holocaust, it must be acclaimed.

And this particular flim is about a mass murderer who - the film suggests - we should feel sympathy for because she couldn't read; and because she didn't know that what she had done - namely, burning 300 women alive and selecting others to be gassed - was part of a bigger thing called 'Holocaust'.

What should be noted here is that the story, although entangled with true historical events, is fictional. The illiterate female mass murdered was an invention of German writer Bernhard Schlink, author of the adapted novel.

Rosenbaum, in his article, writes that the movie - apart from trying to evoke sympathy for a Nazi killer - acquits the 'ordinary Germans' of WWII era of acceptance of Holocaust, and the illiterate character is a symbol of Germans that supposedly had no idea about extermination of Jews - while in fact, they were perfectly aware of it.

Personally, I think there are many other movies where this claim of 'unknowing Germans' (or Germans massively opposing Hitler) is made more blatantly. And although I realized how little and distorted is the historical knowledge of an average American, I really didn't think they will fall for this story: it seemed too absurd to me.

I was wrong. The film affects almost anyone because of its use of the strongest weapon known to filmmakers: nudity. We see a beautiful woman having a passionate affair with a teenage boy - long before the woman turns out to be a Holocaust murderer.

We can't judge what she has done (and what wasn't depicted onscreen, of course), remembering her naked body. Kate Winslet's body. Other big names on the film poster? Ralph Fiennes, Sydney Pollack, Frank Minghella (last movie he's produced), the director Stephen Daldry.

.. All of them created a film that makes us sympathetic of a Nazi killer. It doesn't make us consider what she has done - the way the events are depicted makes sympathy the only proper reaction. What good can I say about this movie? Well, Kate Winslet (without an aging make-up) still looks great, and she has many occasions to show it up.

A few truly amazing stills of her are the best things you can extract from this movie. What, a disrespect for a brilliant actress? Not as evident as this film has - for any kind of commonsense morality.