How to Read a Film

Rarely is a film as good as the book it’s based on—never if it’s a good book.

“The Reader” is a good book. The adaptation of “The Reader” starring Kate Winslet in her best performance in a career of truly amazing acting, though not as good as the book, is as good as adaptations of good books get.

There are few things I believe in more than the transformatative power of reading. “The Reader” explores that power, celebrating reading and being read to.

“The Reader” is based on the novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink, which I reviewed here a few weeks ago.

It’s a deeply resonate story—made no less so because I could see where it was headed from the very beginning.

The story of “The Reader” is a simple one, a love story of sorts filled with eroticism, secrets, horror, and compassion—all of which unfold against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.

When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna Schmitz, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers even more shameful than murder.

There’s a line in the film that I’m not sure is in the book that goes something like “all Western literature springs from characters who have something to hide.

Secrets.

As Frederick Buechner says, “I am my secrets, as you are yours.”
Hanna Schmitz has secrets—several big ones—as does Michael Berg and the entire country of Germany, and, as usual, Buechner is right. He or she or they are his or her or their secrets.

“The Reader” is a faithful adaptation of the book, a beautifully shot film, with an extraordinary cast. It’s powerful and profound, and erotic—it’s eroticism coming no less from Michael reading to Hanna than the two enjoying what happens when words become flesh.

David Cross, who plays the young Michael Berg gives a great performance, Ralph Fiennes, one of my favorite actors and the man who will forever be for me Maurice Bendrix from “The End of the Affair” does his usual stellar job, but it is Kate Winslet who really proves again that she is the actress of her generation. Brave and beautiful and bare—her breasts alone are worth the price of admission—Kate Winslet is also brutal and altogether Brilliant. That she also turns in such a powerhouse performance in “Revolutionary Road” in the same year is truly astounding.

In what is truly a rare occurrence,“The Reader” the book and the film has my highest recommendation. Read it—or have it read to you—as soon as you can. Then see the film (if for no other reason than to see Kate as God made her). The power and force of language on display—whether reading book or film—are astonishing. As you read either the elegant novel or its evocative adaptation, it will also read you—and haunt you in the way only profoundly true art can, and you’ll be grateful that it does.

How do you read a film? Just like a book. You let it read you.