The Reader (Daldry, 2009)
This week back in 2009, I reviewed The Reader for the Capital Times newspaper:
If you are on the look out for an intelligent, serious and impressively well-made drama that will stimulate and move you (and of course you are, or you wouldn’t be reading this) then The Reader will fit your bill perfectly. The last of the big Oscar contenders to hit our shores, this is a version of the best-selling novel which put the German struggle to come to terms with the crimes of the Nazis centre stage. The adaptation (by British playwright and screenwriter David Hare) also does this but something else as well – it becomes a meditation on all kinds of guilt and shame as well as the complex interaction between the two.
In 1958, schoolboy Michael Berg falls ill and is helped by a stranger (the extraordinary Kate Winslet). After his recovery, three months later, he returns to thank her and they begin an affair that lasts the final summer of his childhood. Between bouts of lovemaking she demands he read to her, telling her the stories and plays he is studying at school. Several months later she disappears, breaking poor Michael’s heart, only to return to his life eight years later in a Berlin courtroom, on trial for war crimes.
Flawlessly acted (by Winslet, Ralph Fiennes as the adult Berg and newcomer David Kross as the callow youth) and directed with careful precision by Stephen Daldry, The Reader carries with it an intellectual weight that acts like a kind of amplifier for the material, rather than simply adding layers of emotion. Terribly good.
Also featured in that April 2009 review for Capital Times, the pirate radio comedy The Boat That Rocked (“I loved it, despite its sloppy sentimentality and many flat patches”), live action animé reboot Dragonball Evolution (“balderdash”) and The Rock in the Disney remake Race to Witch Mountain (“It rips along with good humour (and some surprisingly effective schmaltz)”.
Where to watch The Reader
Aotearoa: Digital rental from Apple or Neon
Australia: Streaming on Stan or Starz
Canada & UK: Digital rental from Apple or Amazon
Ireland: Digital rental from Apple*
USA: Streaming on Britbox, or Kanopy
Further listening
Last Friday night on RNZ Nights with Emile Donovan, Emile did me the great kindness of quoting my own review back to me when I threatened to get too verbose about Origin. A real “I think what you are trying to say is …” moment.
Further reading
One of my local cinemas – always very generous to me personally so I won’t call them out by name – only pins up international film reviews on their noticeboard.
This is frustrating as those critics are not automatically better than anyone here in New Zealand and you might think that an independent cinema would help promote those of us who are active in their neighbourhood.
More annoying is their new habit of sticking big “Rotten Tomatoes Fresh” labels on movie posters. I overheard a patron there the other day talking about how they check RT before deciding what to watch and my heart sank a little bit.
Then I read this excellent (long) memorial for Bryan VanCampen, film critic for the tiny Ithaca Times in New York. It’s about how local reviewers contribute to a domestic film culture, something I was always conscious of at the Capital Times but it feels like we are fighting a losing battle now.
The homogenisation of opinion via RT and MetaCritic, the reduction of criticism to quotable sound bites, the huge influence of the global media outlets, and negative domestic developments like newsroom redundancies and website redesigns that hide arts content (and no longer even offer a search facility), all mean a reduction in the discourse.
I’m very grateful for the outlets that I still have, of course, and this newsletter is a great way to keep my pencil sharp, but this slow ‘death by a thousand cuts’ doesn’t serve audiences wherever they are.
*I’ve just noticed that there are subscribers from Ireland so it behooves me to add Irish options for where to find titles so they will feel included.
