Defending The Reader

As Oscar weekend reaches its ultimate moment with the pageantry of awards announced and feted, I feel once again compelled to take issue with others writing on The Reader's take on the Holocaust. I agree, for example, with filmmaker Rod Lurie's cogent argument for The Huffington Post that The Reader is well-made and beautifully acted. In fact, this movie deserves the Best Picture accolade just for generating this volume of discourse on the Shoah.

I find it hard to believe that viewers see the Hanna character as anything more than complex in her simplicity, unredeemed because she remains ignorant of her crime, and unredeemed anyway because the situation of racism, blatant murder of a person or millions for simply being who they are is unredeemable. She is a character who exists merely to raise this issue again and again.

Let us realize that she is a creation of an educated German writer, Bernhard Schlink, whose book The Reader is mandatory reading in German schools. Does she exist because Germans can now feel better about this hideous historic era, even victims themselves? No matter how you interpret the Hanna character, I do not see how this misreading is possible.

As to Lena Olin's character, I must ask, why do people insist upon seeing their Holocaust survivors as nightmare ridden variations on Rod Steiger's Pawnbroker in Sidney Lumet's classic film? When Olin reaches for the tin box, the gesture suggests volumes about what she has repressed in order to survive.

As a child of Holocaust survivors, I recognize many of the people who I've known all my life in her: Jews, smart and prosperous who would not give in to Hitler's plan to annihilate the Jewish population by being anything other than triumphant after the war.

And by the way, not all of Hitler's -- eh, Germany's-- victims were marked with tattoos. My mother, a survivor of Auschwitz and Stutthof, spent much of those war years incarcerated in the Lodz Ghetto, working as a slave laborer in a rug fabrike. By the time she was evacuated to Auschwitz, the Germans were not wasting precious murder time on tattoos.

Comments

[GEM-592]

"I find it hard to believe that viewers see the Hanna character as anything more than complex in her simplicity, unredeemed because she remains ignorant of her crime, and unredeemed anyway because the situation of racism, blatant murder of a person or millions for simply being who they are is unredeemable. She is a character who exists merely to raise this issue again and again."

You haven't looked very hard, and I believe this was Mr. Lurie's point, at least in part. Just surf any online movie site, there's no shortage of naive responses from younger viewers who see Hanna as an unqualified hero, and miss the larger context altogether. Couldn't the producers of the movie predict this uninformed response?

[alenaspoppa]

I don't think she was covering for anyone. She was simply more ashamed of her illiteracy than of the crimes she'd committed during the war.

[ThursdayNext]

We went to a movie marathon of the Best Picture Nominations yesterday and were quite moved by "The Reader." The point I kept making in our conversations about Hannah was exactly this point. We shouldn't dismiss the effect shame can have on the decisions people make. I have read many news stories about people who can't read and write and are too ashamed to say or do anything about it. Why is is so hard to believe that Hannah was more ashamed of that than of her actions in the SS? Her statement that showing remorse or regret doesn't change the fact that those people are still dead is powerful and rationalizes her refusal to admit her illiteracy.

[SVANDUSEN]

Rod Lurie's review missed much of the point. While the holocaust was formulated, planned, and set into motion by a cadre of elites, the bulk of the actual 'dirty work' was carried out by very ordinary people, not just strutting peacocks in black uniforms but a vast army of bureaucrats --- little gray men (and women) in little gray suits, sitting at little gray desks, in little gray offices, in little gray buildings, doing little gray things --- for very dark purposes. The 'Einsatzgruppen', who did the majority of the rounding up and killing in the field, were manned by a cross- section of the German population --- including police officers. Daniel J. Goldhagen points out in his book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, that the 'average German' approved of 'eliminationist anti-semitism', was not unaware of what was being done, and, contrary to the mythology, did NOT have to be coerced into participation.

It is not just the highly visible, highly vocal, ranting racist who must be watched for. They often neutralize themselves with their own cartoonishness. It is the person sitting next to us on the bus, standing behind us at the checkout counter, working next to us on the job, worshiping beside us in church, socializing with us in off hours, and yes --- even we ourselves --- who may be capable of such deeds.

Yes, Ms. Weinreich, the point needs to be made again and again!

[AtlasShrugs]

Obviously you missed the point that the film suggests illiteracy is more shameful than the murder of hundreds of innocents. But, hey, we're supposed to appreciate how highbrow this film is because the 36 year-old woman has the 15 year-old boy who she calls "kid" read to her from great books after they have lots of graphic sex. Ah, great literature trumps child molestation, every time.

[SVANDUSEN]

Obviously YOU missed the point (but then your username suggests that this is not unusual). Frankly, I couldn't care less whether or not some thirty-six year-old woman had sex with a fifteen year-old (at fifteen someone may be an adolescent but is definitely not a child). But that's not the point either. My comment refers, not to the film itself, but to Rod Lurie's review which seems to take exception to the the film's implication that the atrocities were committed by 'ordinary people' and not by bug-eyed slavering monsters who magically boiled up out of a crack in the ground.

It is exactly the ordinariness and 'normalcy' of people like Hanna which makes their actions so horrifying and troublesome. Bug-eyed monsters are expected to act like bug-eyed monsters. We understand that. It is when 'normal people' act like bug-eyed monsters that out understanding is taxed. It is this that we must wrestle with and come to understand.

THAT is the point!

Thank you!

[DasBoot]

Think again: It's precisely the fact that illiteracy is more shameful to Hanna than her crimes that makes her such a compellingly infuriating character in the story.

[aFlyoverPerson]

I finally went to see this last night. Other than being filled with questions about the complexity and humanity of nearly all the characters, I still don't know why Hannah, later exposed as illiterate, claimed in court to have written the report, which made her receive the harshest sentence. It was never clear who she was covering for and why.

[Suzanne Boswell]

Hanna first denied having written the report (because obviously she couldn't have), but, as the fellow guards continued to accuse her, the judge decided to compare her handwriting with the handwriting of the report. Her lawyer put pen and paper in front of her, and they ordered her to write her name (which she again, couldn't do)
She chose to admit to having written the report rather than exposing herself as illiterate