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The Reader 22 March 09

Section: article

Categories: Film / in-a-cinema

Pleasantly surprised by this film. The production design, make-up, the language and accents, the sites and sets, the cinematography, the historical perspective, were all nicely done. I don’t recall another film which has taken such a compassionate and insightful look at German history, at the Third Reich and its impact. (Well, Nicht Versöhnt / Not Reconciled and Machorka-Muff by the Straubs, by they are in another category of cinema.)

The film contributes towards answering the question of how something like the Third Reich could have happened, at least looking at individual, lower-level civil servants. And the moral questions in the film were not just limited to that time but extended to the mid-nineties. One thing to be clear about though: there are people in the US government and military carrying out comparable atrocities as those touched on in The Reader. And not only the US, Israel comes in a close second here.

On Bruno Ganz: I could listen to him at length and any time speaking either English or German.

The German accents in the movie were well done, and of course many of them were authentic. Winslet was excellent. What was strange for me, though, was the accented yet grammatically perfect English – a combination that would rarely occur in reality. (I’m not suggesting the writer should have integrated grammatical errors in the dialogue, just that it was a strange juxtaposition for me.)

  • Title: The Reader
  • Directed by: Stephen Daldry
  • Writing credits: David Hare, book by Bernhard Schlink
  • Starring: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Jeanette Hain, David Kross, Susanne Lothar, Aliss Wilms
  • Year: 2008
  • Cinema: Turm Kino, Frankfurt Germany