Revisiting The Reader

Dave Karger gives The Reader a second look and is wrecked by it:

This past weekend, I decided to give The Reader a second chance. It’s fascinating to learn which films grow on you with repeat viewings and which don’t. This year, I enjoyed Slumdog Millionaire and Milk more when I watched them again, while my love for Frost/Nixon faded a bit the second time. (And I simply don’t have enough time to sit through Benjamin Button again.) With The Reader, though, the difference was the most dramatic. This time, I found myself quite moved by it, particularly during Kate Winslet’s centerpiece courtroom scene in which the film’s surprising plot twist is revealed. By the end, I was a wreck.

On the flipside, Slate Magazine rips the film to shreds, begging voters not to give the Oscar to the film:

What, exactly, was the Kate Winslet character’s “personal triumph”? While in prison for participation in an act of mass murder that was particularly gruesome and personal, given the generally impersonal extermination process‚Äîas a death camp guard, she helped ensure 300 Jewish women locked in a burning church would die in the fire‚Äîshe taught herself to read! What a heartwarming fable about the wonders of literacy and its ability to improve the life of an Auschwitz mass murderer!

Karger, by the way, doesn’t believe The Reader or any other film can best Slumdog on February 22. The Slate column, I believe, is unfair to the character of Hanna Schmitz. We can marvel at how no one did anything back then to prevent the the slaughter of six million. But what did anyone really expect from Hanna Schmitz? That she would stand up to the Nazis? That would have been suicide and clearly it was something that just was not done by the vast majority of Germans at the time. The film makes the point of how easy it is to lay blame on one person as a scapegoat when, in effect, EVERYONE was guilty of letting it happen.