Movie Review – The Reader(2018)

The Reader is directed by Stephen Daldry who also directs The Hours and Billy Elliot. Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) who is a tram conductor taking tickets on the trolley helps a sick young boy Michael Berg(Ralph Fiennes) to go home safely. Michael visits Hanna to appreciate her help. They develop sexual relationships. Michael loves literature and falls in love with the old woman who can be his mother at her age. She calls him a kid. Michael loves to read The Odyssey by Homer and The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov. He even writes poems when they are dating. In contrast, she did not take the offer of a promotion at the Siemens factory because of her illiteracy. She is limited by her capability. Hanna disappears after they have a summer trip together. She makes him at a loss.

He meets her again at a trial as he is a law student at Heidelberg University Law School located in Germany and he goes to the trial for his study. Hanna is one of the defendants in the case of several former Schutzstaffel guards accused of letting 300 Jewish women and children perish in a burning church during the death march near Kraków, Poland.

She is charged with crimes against humanity and is sentenced to life. In the trial, Michael discovers she is illiterate. 

His conflicting emotions over Hanna, including his love for her, his disgust over her Nazi past and his sympathy for the personal dilemma Hanna faces during her trial. The more he understands her past, the more he is ashamed of her killing people. What is the nature of his lover? Why did she do that? Her past against humanity makes him uncomfortable. When he reads for her, has she ever thought of the prisoners who read for her as well? It is the inner struggle a young intellect faces in love. He judges if his lover is evil as she kills the Jewish. His spiritual world and moral standards are much higher than Hanna's. He examines his feelings towards Hanna the woman he loves. He is ashamed of having a love relationship with a killer or a sinner. Someone he loved has acted in such an unimaginably evil way. He is frustrated and hates this relationship he once had. He does not stand for her by telling the judge that she is illiterate.

After the affair in the summer, Michael is reserved with women, divorced from his wife and distant from people. He becomes an official attorney who is supposed to have a bright future. He still sucks in the summer affair and struggles of her past. He never tells anybody about this relationship.

He still cannot forget about her and sends cassette tapes to her in jail. Hanna is ashamed of illiteracy but she learns in jail. She was just a guard that could not read. Maybe she does not know what she is doing and just obeys. She was not that evil. 

The traumatic experience of the concentration camp in wartime leaves scars on the people involved. Holocaust survivors did not talk about their past, and when they did, they were not listened to. Their memories were sealed in muteness and silence. Out of guilt, he keeps sending her tapes. The catharsis in love purifies the guard and nurtures her sense of guilt. She cannot read and is not smart. She does not know how to defend herself in the trial. She does not want to show that she is illiterate which leads her to be in jail for a lifetime. Forrest Gump said I’m not a smart man, but I know what love is. She learns how to read in the jail by listening to the tapes and writing to him. But he never replies to her. After 20 years, she is punished for her sin. She learns to read driven by the love in the past, reading makes her find her conscience or awareness. But it also leads her to another tragedy. When she can finally have freedom and leave the jail soon, she commits suicide in jail by standing on a stack of books she borrows and hanging herself after meeting Michael. She leaves money for the victim to seek forgiveness. 

In the end, he visits the survivor in the camp and donates the money she left to a Jewish literacy organization in Hanna's name. He can finally open up himself to his daughter. His love, forgiveness and guilt have been shown in this relationship.

In a Western country emphasizing civilization and morality, her cruelty finds its origin in her ignorance. When she was in the church during the summer trip, had she ever thought about the prisoners she killed? However, Milgram experiment which is about obedience to authority shows that people will likely follow orders, even harmful ones, when instructed by an accepted authority figure. In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist, wants to find out how ordinary citizens were able to commit acts of unspeakable evil in Nazi Germany. His experiment helps us understand our human behaviors. Milgram first described his research in a 1963 article in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. According to the Milgram experiment, Hanna is just a guard following the instructions. Her blind obedience makes such cruelty. She once asked what would the judge do if he were the guard. She cannot think of other possibilities. When she did not defend herself that she did not write the report as she was ashamed of being illiterate, the judge also judged her by the report.

It is a matter of blind obedience in a non-intelligent guard who is also affected by the Nazi war crimes. Her illiteracy pushes her into a dangerous situation. She was just doing her duty. If she chooses to end her life after many years, it indicates that she is not a Satan who kills people with no conscience. It is the part of Michael that is hard to accept and digest. Michael can be relieved in this summer love finally.

Bibliography:

https://www.davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/550fa05a3229c.pdf

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/matter-obedience