The Reader

What a fine story ... I can't imagine how anyone can craft such characters and such a plot.

Now, I've not read the book, but how I enjoyed the movie.

It took awhile ... at first, what is this? As the young Michael Berg (David Kross) has a summer affair with Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet). From the get-to, you know that something is wrong, though tragic is the better word. Hanna is searching for something, and the young man is drawn into her sorrow.

The acting is superb on all counts. David Kross brings to life the angst and the lust of a 15-year old boy, both innocent and madly in love.

Kate Winslet - incredible. Her face is the face of sorrow and hidden depths. A story that needs to be told, but can only be hinted at.

As they lay entwined in one another's arms, she has him read to her, one book after the other, bringing tears to her eyes at times.

And then, one day, she's gone, and that's the last of it until Micheal, now a law student, attends a trial of concentration camp guards charged with the death of 300 Jews allowed to burn to death in a church on fire, the result of Allied bombs.

The law students and their professor attend the trial, and there sits Hanna, along with others, charged with the heinous crime.

When questioned, she's totally innocent - "They were under our guard. We couldn't let them out. What would have happened?"

When the judge reviews the written documents, he asks her if she wrote the report. He asks for a sample of her handwriting, a table and pencil put in front of her. She looks at it, and says, "It's not necessary; I wrote the report."

Her secret? She can neither read nor write, and though a simple confession of that fact could have saved her, years of hiding it, years of shame about it, compel her to maintain the secret, and she alone is given a life-time sentence. The others, only a few years.

For Micheal Berg, it all falls into place - and for the audience as well ... in some tragic fashion, was her love for the boy some means of atonement? As it turns out, she made prisoners do the same - read to her. Is she a monster? Is she a tormented soul? Somewhere in between?

Michael Berg goes to the prison to tell her that he knows her secret, but at the last minute, walks away. He could have entered what he knew, but he didn't. So begins another secret! His.

After a failed marriage in the midst of his own law career (now older, played by an amazing Ralph Fiennes), he reaches out to her - he sends her tapes - he reads to her, book after book, and in time, she begins the arduous process of learning how to read and write. It's quite extraordinary how this unfolds in the movie.

But I've already told you too much, though I've left a good deal for you to see on your own.

Don't miss this powerful film under the direction of Stephen Daldry.

Defiance

Based on true events (the film is an adaptation of Nechama Tec's Defiance: The Bielski Partisans), the untold story of three Polish brothers who, after the death of their parents at the hands of Nazis and Polish sympathizers, form a resistance movement and ultimately save 1200 Jews from the Nazi death camps. They survive by their wits in the forests of Belrussia, each of the brothers, a leader, but each in their own way, sometimes at cross-purposes.

Some of the reviews thus far have been critical of the script - a bit campy, too stylized. 

But I don't agree.

I found the script terribly moving, spare in its content - quick and desperate, and to the point. These are terribly hard times, and no one has either the time or the energy to engage in lengthy conversation. Several intellectuals join the camp, and their banter is more than enjoyable, but the brothers, having taken on the protection of the infirm, the elderly and children, bear an enormous responsiblity.

One of the themes is the question of violence - at one point, "They may hunt us like animals, but we'll not be animals."

As my son notes, "Edward Zwick [director] doesn't know how to make a bad movie."

Beautifully filmed in the forests, the imagery of the seasons stands in stark contrast to their desperate hunger and constant fear. How any of them made it is beyond me, but the iron-willed leadership of Tuvia Bielski (Daniel Craig) sees them through.

His leadership is challenged at times by his more violently inclined brother, Zuz, played so adeptly by Liev Schreiber, who, at one point, joins a Russian partisan brigade because he wants to fight. Welcomed as a "comrade," Zuz nonetheless faces a constant low-level Antisemitism - though contrary to "Party" policy, it's there - "Do Jews fight?" "This one does" and does so with ruthless abandon - is he trying to prove the point?

We watch the youngest brother - Asael (Jamie Bell) - come into his own as a leader - though of a more gentle and thoughtful kind than either of his brothers.

The camp is composed of all the usual suspects - the angry fighter who wants more food for the men who get it, whereas camp rules are simple: everyone eats the same amount, at the same time.

The intellectuals who talk about it; the sick the dying ... and "forest love." Life in its fullness - life as we all know it - a microcosm of humanity, and perhaps that's the real tragedy of it all - we are all so much alike, but how we can distance one another and then look at one another with hatred. The human mystery - the folly of our story.

At one point, they capture a young German soldier who pleads for his life. What shall they do? Before anyone can decide, he's beaten to death, and every stroke against him, in the name of someone they've lost - brothers and sisters, parents and children - all of their anger and sorrow taken out on a young soldier in bloody reprisal. This is the way it is in such moments of time when humanness is driven to the edge.

Two of the brothers survive and immigrate to New York, to live quietly, without fanfare, never wanting their story told. The youngest brother joins the Red Army on its westward drive and is dead within six months.

A glorious, noble, story that needs to be told.

As we watch Israel pound Gaza, I have to ask: At what point does past suffering no longer justify present brutality? Just a question that rattles around inside my mind.

The acting is terrific; it's fun to see Daniel Craig in this powerfully nuanced role - the same complexity, a slightly ironic distance, he brings to the Bond character. Craig's a fine actor.

They all are, and hats of Zwick for bringing this powerful, evocative, story to the screen.

Along with Valkyrie, primal stories of Western history - stories that deserve to be told again and again, re-examined from every perspective, for such stories can never be exhausted in meaning, nor the questions they prompt!