The Reader

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

For a film whose main character is a lawyer, that contains scenes in a law class, and which presents a trial, this movie does not render any final judgments of those in the story. Director Stephen Daldry and his writer, David Hare, who adapted the tale from Bernhard Schlink’s book, instead present various aspects of the people depicted, and leave it to the audience members to decide how they feel about what they have seen and heard.

The movie begins in 1995, and then goes backward and forward in time. The first image is that of a cooked breakfast egg. It is an object that appears hard and opaque on the outside, but it hides something fragile on the inside. The shot possibly suggests that people try to put up impenetrable fronts to shield their vulnerable inner psyches which may have been damaged by prior traumas. The egg Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) has prepared is for a woman he has slept with by the name of Brigitte (Jeanette Haine). She says he let her sleep because “you can’t bear to have breakfast with me.” We first see her naked, which means she is not afraid of baring herself. Michael, however, is already dressed, and although he was physically intimate with her, emotionally he keeps her at a distance, not even allowing for time for them to get to know each other during a morning breakfast conversation. He does divulge that he has a daughter whom he is going to meet later. She doesn’t even know about her, stressing his lack of openness. He says his daughter has been abroad. So, we immediately know that Michael is a loner. He looks at a train and sees himself as a youth.

Fifteen-year-old Michael (David Kross) is walking the streets in the town in which he lives in West Germany in 1958, There is a storm and he appears ill. He vomits in an alley. A woman, Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet, in a Best Actress Oscar winning role) almost slips on what Michael has thrown up. She goes into her flat for a bucket of water to wash away the vomit. Throughout the movie, water and washing is associated with Hanna. Is it a compulsive desire, maybe because of her German background, to eliminate mess, anything that compromises the efficient operation of the day’s activities? Can it symbolize the Nazi desire to cleanse that which is considered impure? She then wipes Michael’s face. It is a maternal act, as she comforts him by saying it’s all right. She hugs him right away, to keep him warm, to console him, but the hug may be too intimate for a first meeting, and especially for someone so much younger. She helps him get home safely.

At home, Michael’s father (Matthias Habich) says his son is fine, even though he is clearly sick. His mother (Friederike Becht), on the other hand, calls in a doctor, who diagnoses scarlet fever, and Michael must stay in bed, isolated from others. Since it is the mother who shows caring, Michael’s attraction to Hanna may contain an Oedipal element as a reaction to the harshness of his father. When Michael is well, he brings Hanna flowers to thank her for her kindness. But she seems almost like a Jekyll and Hyde character, sounding like a military officer barking a command to put the flowers in the sink, instead of smiling and saying thank you. Does this behavior reflect the German tendency for discipline to accomplish a task, or is she afraid to get too close to anybody, wanting to isolate herself so as not to be exposed for the crimes of which we later learn? She may feel that she does not deserve to have any contact with people.

Michael sees her unmade bed, putting the image of her in it in his mind. He watches her as she washes her bra, which also encourages sexual awakening. He says he was in bed for three months. Her response sounds again like a question from someone believing in the superior race when she asks, “Have you always been weak?” She does not say “sick,” but “weak,” which sounds more like he may have a character flaw. However, her prior aid may be a desire to make amends for the Nazi policy of putting to death all of those who were infirm. He says that he was too sick to even read. She says she will walk him home on her way to work as a tram conductor, but first she tells him to wait outside while she changes. He peeks in and sees her in her slip and putting on stockings. She sees him looking, appears concerned, but not outraged. He is embarrassed and runs out.

Michael spies on her on the tram. Her uniform makes her look like she is in the military, and foreshadows what we learn later about her being a prison guard. He is intrigued by her, and shows up at her apartment. She initially acts stern again, and efficient, demanding he help her by filling buckets of coal for heat. He is covered in coal dust. She laughs for the first time and tells him he can’t go home like that. She fills a tub of water for him (again stressing her cleansing trait), tells him that she won’t look, but now it is she who peeks, observing his nakedness. She goes to get him a towel, but he is upset because he has an erection. She brings a towel, and holds it up, blocking him from her. She is now also naked, and she touches him saying, “So that’s why you came back.” He says she is so beautiful, but she doesn’t feel that way about herself, and says, “What are you talking about?” Her past may prohibit her from thinking that she can be considered in a positive light. She still calls him “kid,” which adds to the feeling of inappropriateness based on their age difference. Is she exploiting his youth, corrupting his innocence, for her own sexual gratification? Or, after we learn of her acts as a prison guard, was she trying to be loving toward someone youthful to make up for those children killed in the Holocaust?

Michael has flashbacks of their lovemaking while at the family dinner. He was late, and the sister thinks he is lying about getting lost. But, the mother, always supportive, says he never lies, which adds to the idea that Michael wants a connection to a mother figure. It also is the start of Michael keeping secrets and hiding what he has done, which connects him to Hanna’s character. Hanna is like an erotic teacher, who will school him in the ways of sex. In the beginning, he kisses her quickly, and she says move slowly, and she later tells him not to rush intercourse so she can enjoy the experience. He wants to go back to school early after his illness, so he can be out of the house and be with her. They don’t even know each other’s names, which shows that there is psychological distance between them despite their intimacy. When he asks her name she initially dodges the question. She does tell him, but he observes that she looks “so suspicious.” She is afraid of being found out about her past, which segues into the next scene.

We next have Michael in school with a teacher (an academic one as opposed to Hanna’s carnal one) saying that all of western literature is based on characters wanting secrecy. He says they are determined to withhold specific information, for reasons “sometimes perverse, sometimes noble,” which very much applies to this story. So, the teacher is a fictional character commenting about fictional characters. Director Daldry links scenes thematically, as he then cuts to the other “classroom,” Hanna’s bed, with the naked lovers mixing literature in with their sexual studies. Hanna asks Michael about his subjects at school, like a mother would do. He is studying a play, and she wants him to read it to her. In the tub (again sexual “knowledge” in the biblical sense is intertwined with the desire to expunge or cleanse sin in the same image), she says he is good at reading. He admits that he didn’t think he was good at anything. So, Hanna is nurturing his self-esteem. His confidence builds, and he begins to become more outgoing, participating and performing well in sports at school.

Michael surprises Hanna by appearing on the tram while she is finishing her workday. She ignores him. He waits for her at her apartment, but she is angry, not wanting her private life, her secrets, to spill out into the public. She doesn’t want to draw any attention to herself. Her suspicious nature here and in not wanting to reveal her name causes the audience to wonder about what she is hiding (those secrets that Michael's teacher pointed out). He says he didn’t mean to upset her. She says, “You don’t have the power to upset me. You don’t matter enough to upset me.” She is brutal here, almost reflecting a Nazi superior attitude, by dismissing someone else’s sense of self-importance. On the other hand, she may just be trying to distance herself from Michael, because she feels by allowing herself to get close to someone makes her exposed and thus vulnerable. She spouts out her venom while stripping, getting ready for (guess what) a cleansing bath, her words and nakedness sending out mixed signals. He being so young is very impressionable, and is hurt. He goes out but comes back. He says that the thought of being without her is unbearable. He apologizes for showing up in the tram. He asks if she meant what she said about him not meaning anything to her and she shakes her head, “no.” He says he loves her and asks if she loves him, and she nods. This poor boy is getting psychological whiplash dealing with an older woman with a twisted past.

Hanna sets a new rule, that from here on Michael will read first and then they will make love. Literature, exciting her mind, becomes the foreplay, as if she wants intellectual before physical excitement. He reads dramatically from works such as The Odyssey and Huckleberry Finn. He reads the line, “She was dead, and past all help, or need of it,” from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. The words cause Hanna to cry, probably because they resonate with her own life. She finds his reading from Lady Chatterley's Lover to be disgusting, and says so while they are in the tub naked together. But then she tells him to read on, showing the conflicting nature of the situation, where she is at first being motherly, (again stressing cleanliness in the bath water), promoting morals, but then embracing the erotic.

Michael plans a biking trip for them in the country. On the trip he recites poetry which talks of making love stronger if it is threatened because it will only make it more intense, “sharpen” it. But, he finds later how his love for her cuts him deeply emotionally. At an outdoor restaurant, Hanna does not read the menu and asks for whatever Michael is ordering. She is upset by children near them. Hanna later goes into a church, and the children's choir makes her cry. All of these incidents are a foreshadowing of what we later learn about Hanna. The waitress at the restaurant says she hopes Michael’s “mother” enjoyed herself. But then she sees him kiss her, which brings a look of distaste (appropriately, being at an eatery) to her face, accentuating the Oedipal nature of the relationship.

We return to the adult Michael as he looks at his notebook which shows the titles of numerous books he must have read to Hanna. He has a room full of books, showing how literature has continued to be a force in his life, probably reinforced by its connection to her. As he drives, there is choral music in his car, reminiscent of the church at which Hanna cried. He is now a lawyer by profession, and he represents people who may be guilty of crimes. His connection to Hanna and what we learn she has done may the reason why he chosen to be a defense attorney. He may also feel empathy for those who he defends because of his own guilty feelings for having loved someone who committed crimes.

Sophie (Vijessna Ferkic) is a new girl in school that interests him. He spends time at a public swimming pool with her and another boy. He leaves to see Hanna, and now he makes an excuse to her for being late, as she looks a bit put off that he was not on time for her. Perhaps she is jealous of him spending time with children his own age, which is what he should be doing. But he brings a book by Anton Chekhov for her to soothe her irritation. Michael is upset that he has disappointed Sophie by not going to his birthday party thrown by her and his friends because he promised to see Hanna. He reads to her, but Hanna cuts him off, acting moody. He complains that she never asks how he’s doing, and doesn’t even care that it’s his birthday. He says that everything is always on her terms, which shows her controlling ways. She tells him to go to the party then. He tries to kiss her, but she pushes him away and slaps him. He says it’s always he who apologizes. She says that “No one has to apologize,” which probably refers to her not wanting to feel guilty about her actions.  

Hanna bathes Michael like he is a small child, stressing the mother-son aspect of their relationship. Again, we see her overemphasis on cleaning, as if wanting to wash away her sins. Then he initiates intimacy, and she succumbs, wanting to be loved, but not feeling right about it, maybe not thinking she deserves it. She could be with a young boy to reconnect to innocence, but in a way she is corrupting him. She seems to appreciate this danger, and tells Michael that he must now be with his friends. But, Michael feels alienated from those of his own age, because his relationship with Hanna has left him stuck between adolescence and adulthood. He leaves Sophie at the pool and runs to Hanna’s apartment. He discovers that she has moved out, and he feels abandoned. He has not been eating with his family, but shows up at dinner, with his father saying that they knew he would return eventually. Michael feels the need to be at home to give him some comfort after losing Hanna. He wanders around alone, and slips into the pool area, perhaps to resurrect the memories of the baths he shared with Hanna.

As an adult, Michael still daydreams of Hanna, and must be reminded about meeting his daughter, Julia (Hannah Herzsprung). He asks what are her plans, and she says she is glad to be back in Berlin. He asks if she has seen her mother, so we know that Michael has not been able to stay in a committed relationship, possibly because he does not trust that love will endure after Hanna left him. Julia says she wanted to get away, so she has been in Paris. Michael says it was to get away from him, because he was not open with her, or anybody else. The pain he suffered because of Hanna has affected his emotional connection to others.

The time shifts back to when Michael was in college preparing to be a lawyer. He is enrolled in a seminar about German guilt, obviously relating to the country’s role in the Holocaust. But, it is a small group, possibly stressing the fact that the Germans do not want to face their culpability in furthering the Nazi cause. The seminar members go on a field trip where there are police present to control demonstrators. The instructor, Professor Rohl (Bruno Ganz), a Holocaust survivor, says the protesters are for and against the trial of some accused of their participation in the Nazi state. This fact shows that there were still pro-Nazi feelings present in Germany. In the gallery Michael hears the name and the voice of his ex-lover, Hanna Schmitz. She joined the SS in 1943. Instead of accepting her promotion at a factory, she joined the SS, because, she says, there were jobs, and she applied to be a guard. She was at Auschwitz and then in Krakow. Perhaps that is how it starts, with the promise of prosperity, purpose, and then one becomes caught up in a dangerous movement, possibly out of gratitude for being accepted. The professor observes that Michael is visibly shaken.

On the way back on the train, the professor asks the students for comments on what they have observed. Michael says it wasn’t what he expected (obviously since Hanna was there), and another student says it was exciting to see justice being carried out. Later, while other students are having fun, Michael watches their partying from a distance, obviously being affected by the fact that he may have been in love with somebody who could have participated in monstrous acts. He sees a couple making love from his window, and that reminds him of Hanna, whom he thinks about with mixed feelings now. In class, Professor Rohl says that societies think they are run on morality, but really operate based on law, and its technicalities. He says that one is not guilty of merely working at Auschwitz. Eight thousand people worked at the camp, but only nineteen were convicted, and only six for murder. The law says that to be convicted of murder the state must show that there was intent. The question is not was it moral what someone did, but was it legal, and according to the time the laws were in force, not by current statutes. So, the thrust here is that people may get away with immoral acts because they were legal at the time.

Back in the courtroom, the magistrate references a book written by a survivor of the concentration camps. It notes a selection process that would periodically choose a number of prisoners to go to the death camp at Auschwitz. Hanna, as opposed to the other female ex-guards on trial, says she was part of that process. One of the defendants knits during the proceedings, showing lack of emotional empathy. Hanna says there were six guards and each one chose ten each month to go to the camp. The court asks Hanna if she realized she was sending people to their deaths. But, in her response, her rationalization about taking responsibility comes out when she says that there were new arrivals all of the time, so they had to make room. She makes it sound as if overall administrative efficiency took precedence over concern for individuals. For Hanna, there can’t be anything messy, reflected symbolically in her bathing and washing. While sitting with Michael in her tub, Hanna employed a superficial desire for purity even while she was engaged in the questionable relationship with the young man. She asks the magistrate, concerning her engaging in the death selection process, “What would you have done?” It is a good question, because how many, at the time of the height of Nazi power, would actually have taken a stand against the threatening forces sweeping them along, urged on by a charismatic manipulator?

Ilana Mather (Alexandra Maria Lara) testifies, the survivor who wrote the book about the Auschwitz selection procedure. She says that once those who could no longer be of practical use, they were sent to the death camp. She points to all of the defendants as being involved in the selection. She says Hanna chose differently, by favoring mostly young girls, giving them food and places to sleep. She had some join her at night to read stories as she later did with Michael, following the pattern with him of choosing someone quite young. Maybe she wanted love from somebody youthful like him to make up for the young girls she sent to their deaths. Maybe she wanted to give love and nurturing to make up for what she destroyed in her past. Ilana said at the time they thought Hanna was “more sensitive, she’s more human, She’s kinder.” She chose the weak, the sick, but then still sent them along. The question comes up, “Is that kinder?” She didn’t try to stand up against killing them, only to be nicer before sending them off to die. Hanna does seem shaken at this testimony. Mather’s mother, Rose (Lena Olin) then recounts a death march. One night they slept in a church while the guards took the best accommodations. But a bombing set the building on fire. The doors were locked, but Rose survived while the others died.

In the classroom, one student is disgusted by the legal process, because he believes the trial is just a diversion, a way of creating scapegoats and not forcing all those who allowed the Nazis to come to power to take the blame. He says the law zeroed in on only a few because one woman happened to write a book about her specific situation, when everyone knew what was going on, and they didn’t stop it. One student runs out, not able to face the truth. The student speaking asks Michael why he stares at Hanna. He realizes Michael knows her, and says if he was Michael, he’d shoot Hanna for what she did. He then says, “Shoot them all!” What we have in this story is a conflict between two separate German generations. Hanna represents the older one that allowed Nazi Germany to commit atrocities. Michael’s age group must live with the aftermath of what the prior generation inflicted on them. And, represented by Hanna and Michael’s relationship, the two  groups exist in a kind of love-hate relationship. As youths, boys and girls rely on parents, teachers, and other adults for nurturing and guidance. But in Germany, these youths found out that those that raised them were collaborators in one of history’s worst crimes. The question is, can they still love them? Is the answer the law student’s call for more killing? Is that justice, or revenge, which can continue the recurrence of violence? The film, (as Professor Rohl said), has to do with legality versus morality. Michael is a lawyer, and he is made to ask, in his individual situation, how does he defend or prosecute someone like Hanna? And the broader question that emerges out of the courtroom scenes is how does Germany judge its past?

Michael now is forced to become part of that bigger question of judging his country’s prior actions. He visits one of the death camps. He looks at the barbed wire, the confining barracks, the ovens. Back at the trial, the judge asks the defendants why they didn’t open the doors of the burning church to let the prisoners out. Hanna says they couldn’t unlock the doors because they were guards, and letting the prisoners go free would be against their duty. She says if they “opened the doors, there would be chaos.” There it is, the zeal for order, for control which supersedes any feelings of humanity. Hanna slams the table, saying they were “responsible” for them, bureaucratically, not “to” them, as individuals. The other defendants said it was Hanna who decided not to open the doors, that it was she who wrote the report. The court wants a sampling of her handwriting to see if she wrote the report. The pen and paper are in front of Hanna, but she doesn’t touch them. Michael, in the gallery, remembers how Hanna never read the books, and didn’t read the menu at the restaurant in the country. He realizes that she can’t read or write. The other defendants conspired as revenge against Hanna for admitting to the selection process. Hanna has more guilt over her illiteracy than she does for allowing the prisoners to die, so she admits to writing the report so she doesn’t have to reveal her deficiency. Perhaps that is why she didn’t accept the promotion at her old job because she might have to reveal her inability to read, and write and instead took the guard position. But, in an ironic way, she now sacrifices herself for her sins.

Professor Rohl encounters Michael and chides him for skipping the seminar classes. He tells the professor that he has information about the defendant that could mitigate her sentence. But, he says the defendant is intent on keeping this information secret (which goes back to the high school teacher stating that Western literature is based on characters keeping secrets for a variety of reasons, which implies that there is a mystery, a complexity about people’s nature). Rohl says that he must talk to her, do the right thing. The thrust of his argument is that it is not what we feel but what we do that is important, especially if we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Michael goes to visit Hanna in jail, and dramatically we want the purgation following a confrontation between the two. But that would be too easy, too contrived. Michael can’t confront her, not being able to face his shame for loving someone who he now knows was a war criminal. Or, perhaps he feels like he must be the one to punish her by not convincing her to reveal her illiteracy, and thus letting Hanna be condemned for not only her acts as a SS guard, but also for leaving him, and duping him by hiding her secrets from him. He goes to the female student who showed an interest in him and uses her as a sexual replacement in order to escape his lingering attachment to Hanna. But he leaves their bed, saying he must sleep by himself, because he can’t free himself of his conflicted feelings for Hanna.

There is a shot of Hanna again bathing herself as she prepares for the sentencing, reinforcing her Nazi era German desire to eliminate impurity and guilt. There are mirror images of Michael and Hanna straightening their ties before going to the courtroom, showing how they must put on a false front to cover their internal feelings. Hanna is given the harshest sentence, as she is deemed personally responsible for the murder of three hundred people. The others only get a little over four years of imprisonment. Hanna gets a life sentence.

There is a shot of young Michael going home in a train after the verdict, and then the film cuts to the adult Michael in 1976 riding on a train, the linking of images showing how much of an impact his association with Hanna made on Michael since it feels as if the passage of time has not softened the blow. This trip shows him traveling with his daughter when she was quite young and they are going to see his mother to announce that he is getting a divorce. He has been withdrawn, not even showing up at his father’s funeral, as we learn from his mother’s reprimand. He steers away from situations that evoke strong feelings, because they just expose the vulnerability of his damaged emotions. He also has trouble visiting his home town, because he does not want reminders of his past trauma associated with Hanna. He becomes detached saying that his wife will do well, earning more than he does, which brings out the film’s emphasis on how desire for practicality frees one of the wrenching feelings of becoming emotionally invested.

One of the first books Michael read to Hanna was The Odyssey. As an adult, he comes across a copy of it and decides to record his reading of the work and send it to Hanna, possibly as a way to bridge the gap between them. When she receives it, she cries as she hears Michael’s voice, revealing her strong feelings for him after all of these years. He sends many other recordings as Michael produces his versions of audio books. We hear him dramatically recite Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago and The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov. Older now, Hanna takes out a copy of the latter from the prison library, and listens to Michael’s reading, trying to match up the spoken words with the written ones so she can teach herself how to read.  She actually learns to write a thank you note to Michael, saying, “Thanks for the latest, kid. I really liked it.” She continues to write notes as she ages. He does not correspond, although he continues to send the recordings. Someone at the prison calls Michael, saying Hanna has been in prison for over twenty years, and is up for parole. But, she has no other contacts but him. Michael is told that if Hanna is released, she will be frighteningly alone.

It is now 1988, and Michael finally shows up at the prison. She is happy to see him, they hold hands for a moment, but then he withdraws his hand, showing the conflicting feelings are still present. She still calls him “kid” because that is how she related to him, partially in a motherly way, although she tries to acknowledge his current maturity. He says he secured a job at a tailor shop for her and a place to stay, significantly not far from a library, which was an important part of the bond between them. She says she prefers being read to, but realizes that that’s over between them, as what she did to young people, including him, prevents any retreat into an idyllic past that was really a lie. He asks if she thinks about the past, and she says that before the trial, she didn’t think about it. She says it doesn’t matter what she thinks or feels, because it doesn’t change the fact that the dead are gone. He wanted to see if she learned anything from her horrific history, but she says she did learn - to read. He seems disappointed by her desire to avoid dealing with her sins, (the way the German people didn’t want to confront their country’s atrocities?), and she sees his disappointment. He tells her he will pick her up when she gets out the following week. He still feels he owes her some gratitude since she showed him affection when he was young, and now, he is put into the position of being the parent, taking care of her.

We see him getting a flat ready for her. But his positive activity is then offset as there is a cut to Hanna as she pulls out the table in her room and spreads the books on it to raise herself up so she can hang herself. It is ironic that she uses the same books in her life that Michael read to her and which gave her some joy to end that life. Perhaps she sacrifices herself not out of shame this time, but to free Michael of his attachment to her, and his responsibility for someone who so shattered his feelings for her. He is told of her suicide. He visits her room and there is a message that she left saying to give her money in the room, stored in a tea tin, and the 7,000 Marks in the bank to the daughter who survived the death camp and wrote her memoir. Michael’s reserved front melts away and he cries reading her words.

Michael travels to New York and meets with Miss Mather (Lena Olin now appearing as the older Ilana). He says he was at the trial when she testified. After being coaxed to be honest about his visit, he admits for the first time his affair with Hanna. He tells of her illiteracy and the tapes he sent her. Ilana says that people ask her what she learned in the camps. She says there was nothing to learn, as she sarcastically says the camp was not a university. He should get his catharsis elsewhere, from books or seeing a play, because, “Nothing comes out of the camps,” she says. There is no silver lining according to her hidden within the Holocaust. He gives her the money Hanna left. Ilana observes the tea tin and says she had a tin, too, when she was young, that held sentimental things, but the container itself was more valuable than its contents. But, it was stolen. She says she can’t use the money for some charity that is dedicated to the Jewish Holocaust, because it would be bestowing some type of absolution on Hanna, which she will not do. But, she agrees with Michael’s suggestion to give it to an organization that encourages literacy. She leaves it up to him as to whether the bequest should be in Hanna’s name. She does say she will keep the tin as a tiny bit of restitution that Ilana grants herself.

It is now 1995, and Michael is driving his daughter, but he does not tell her where they are going. The destination turns out to be Hanna’s grave site, and he says to Julia that he wants to tell her who Hanna was to him. The film ends with him saying “a woman helped me.” He must reveal what he has hidden (that prime element of literature), like a confession, so he can mentally cleanse himself (not just physically like Hanna) by letting go of his secret, by honestly telling his story, (as does the film), and thus feel free.

The next film is Mildred Pierce.