The Reader

The Reader directed by Stephen Daldry, based on the book by Bernhard Schlink, starring Ralph Fiennes as Michael Berg and Kate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz, chronicles a young man's run-in with a mysterious woman in post-war Germany and his subsequent attempts to grapple with silence, complicity, and a dark secret. This is as intriguing as the film gets so I'll proceed with spoilers galore.

And Justice for All

The story centers on a small town teenage boy, Michael Berg (initially played by David Kross) who is overcome by a bout of scarlet fever and is helped by a mysterious woman, Hanna Schmitz. She takes him to her apartment to recover and, in no time, he's helping her shovel coal into her furnace and, wouldn't you know it, the young man gets a nice case of soot-in-the-face and has to wash up, with Ms. Schmitz’s skillful assistance of course.

Before long, young Mr. Berg is having passionate sex with Hanna in exchange for reading his book assignments to her. Berg is clearly in love with Hanna though she shows little interest in the emotional dimension of their relationship. In due course she walks out of his life without warning and the young boy grows up a heart broken loner. He goes off to law school where he becomes a pupil of Professor Rohl (Bruno Ganz). As Professor Rohl, Ganz gives one of his more lethargic performances here. As an aside, though, I must say that the sight of an actor who gave the definitive portrayal of Hitler (Downfall) now playing a law school professor focused on confronting Nazi atrocities has an ironic grandeur that's for the ages.

As part of a class assignment, Berg and his class watch a war crime trial of concentration camp guards. Among the defendants is (surprise!) Hanna. Berg is devastated though when a crucial piece of evidence of her supposed signature is introduced at trial, implicating her in the order to kill wartime prisoners, Berg sits by quietly watching rather than reveal exculpatory evidence (she can't read or write) which could lighten her sentence.

Years after her conviction and imprisonment Berg, now a judge (played by Ralph Fiennes), begins a read-by-mail correspondence with Hanna, sending her tape recordings of his book readings. She learns to read and write thanks to him but before things get too cheery she reveals her unrepentant attitude as to her part in The Holocaust and hangs herself. There's some frivolous dreck about Fiennes having a daughter with whom he barely speaks following a divorce. His tight lipped character finally opens up to his daughter and reveals his dark past. Insert catharsis here.

Nazis are People Too

While these are all beautiful metaphors for Germany and Germans’ continuing struggle with collective feelings of guilt over their sometimes silent complicity in The Holocaust the actual story does little to effectively convey these ideas. Berg is the good side of Germany - urbane, compassionate, and committed to justice. Hanna is Germany's dark past - cold, detached, ignorant and unrepentant. This is the stuff of great drama. It is also a case study in how a great idea and metaphors alone do not a great drama make. Moments where the film had the potential to get interesting, namely Berg missing out on the romances of youth because of his infatuation with Hanna, are completely squandered and we are instead ushered into humdrum courtroom proceedings and characters pontificating on Germany's complicity in The Holocaust.

One would hope that the characters would perhaps compensate for the subpar plot. No luck there, caballero. There is an absolute lack of character development which leads to little empathy for Hanna even when, towards the end, the film seems to demand it. I asked myself what the film was getting at. Are we supposed to feel empathy for a camp guard who kills women and children and yet the film does little to humanize? If the film is unwilling to commit itself exploring this controversial emotional thesis (can a monster be humanized?), why should I? How can you expect anyone in the audience to empathize with the supposedly complicated emotional waters Berg is navigating when the writer and director have little interest in building fully realized and complex characters to go on the journey with?

For the Home Crowd

This is one of those films that do the opposite of what great stories are supposed to. Rather than gleaning universal themes and insights about the human condition from unique events and people, this film inverts the formula and creates a story which can only gain resonance by depending on the collective guilt of the audience whose history it chronicles (i.e. Germans).

As the film unspooled, with its focus on themes of guilt, complicity, and forgiveness, I had the creeping suspicion that this film would pack quite an emotional wallop had I had more than just an outsider's historical knowledge about post-war Germany. It felt like it would be a great film if only I could access the deep emotions it's trying to convey or I had grown up in post-war Germany. The Godfather, by way of contrast, illustrates how films should work. While The Godfather is about Italians you don’t have to be Italian for its themes to resonate.


Nazis, Soft Porn, and Ralph Fiennes

Another problem with the film is that it seems to rely on the sophisticated notion that simply because it deals with a "European" subject-matter somehow "artistic" full-frontal shots and passionate sex scenes are, in themselves, character development. Perhaps they are, but what we are left with once the copious amount of “character exposition” is complete is a cast of cardboard characters with little to keep our interest. The characters lack the very complexity which leads to compelling drama and forward narrative momentum.

If we wouldn't accept a vacuous low-budget Rambo film as Oscar-worthy material why should we accept one that shields itself by relying on Nazis, soft porn, and Ralph Fiennes? I hate it when these empty films shroud themselves in pretense and "serious" subject matter as a means of deflecting criticism. It’s an iron trap: If you don't see the point of all the nudity and sex then you're just not sophisticated enough to "understand" the film. If you complain that the characters are cardboard cutouts then you rely too much on American notions of plot, character, and conflict.

The Reader seems to have gotten just the right angle and actors to pull off this overrated puff piece. Ralph Fiennes is interesting in just about anything he does and he goes far with what little he's given here. He does an excellent job of conveying the quiet guilt that has gnawed at this man's soul for decades. Kate Winslet beautifully incarnates the sociopathic detachment of Hanna. Nonetheless, the material does little to deepen their characters beyond these basic traits.

Final Thoughts

The Reader ultimately conveys a single-minded determination to undermine its own great potential. Where we could have had a rich and complex exploration of people reconciling and atoning for a horrific past we instead get shorthand story telling and sketches of characters. Great actors and serious subject matter are supposed to put the emotional heft and meat onto this emaciated narrative and somehow we are supposed to really feel the story. Rarely does this kind of gamble work. With The Reader it failed miserably.

Note to Reader: Walk before you run. Learn to Write before you Read.

Post Script

Oh, and one last thing. I’m a sucker for the beautiful manipulations of advertising. I tip my hat when a good ad can make an awful movie look exciting, interesting, etc. I admire how an advertising department works with what’s there on film, rearranges it to highlight the good stuff, and gets you to shell out those hard-earned ten dollars for a ticket. The good ads may misrepresent but they don’t lie. But The Reader hit a new low! Oh, how you cheated me!

The movie poster features a prominent photograph of a youthful Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes together in the same frame, same shot, same photograph, and a blurb “How far would you go to protect a secret?” Good stuff! All this only to watch the movie and realize that I had been lied to by the photo on the poster. The youthful Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes never share a frame of film together. We only see them together at the very end of the film, for 15 minutes! That’s it! Bad form, people! Bad form!

Valkyrie

Bryan Singer's Valkyrie is a taut thriller starring Tom Cruise and chronicling the events leading up to the July 20, 1944 plot in which German military officers attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The plot's ring leader, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, played by Cruise, attempted to assassinate Hitler with an explosive device and implement a coup using Hitler's very own protocol for suppressing a domestic uprising. The protocol's codename serves as the film's title.

The film's attention to detail is impressive, from Tom Cruise's resemblance to Stauffenberg down to the drab Berlin governmental district and swarming, gray-clad Wermacht troops. Taking a page from Judgment at Nuremberg, Singer introduces Cruise speaking in a German voice over (quite believably) and smoothly morphs it into English. When the film begins we find Cruise fighting in North Africa. He is a man convinced that the war is lost and that, most importantly, the time has come to defy his Fuhrer in order to save his country from ignominious defeat. He is seriously injured by an Allied strafing attack and, thereafter, with the support of senior military officials, plots to kill Hitler.

Cruise delivers a passionate and sharp performance as von Stauffenberg. He is a man that understands that in order to stop Hitler, as his character puts it, bold - even rash - action is needed. Cruise manages a steely and intense determination in his portrayal and Singer does a commendable job in playing up the tension at all the right moments. English and German supporting players like Kenneth Brannagh and Terrence Stamp, among others, are serviceable in their roles as military leaders committed to ending Hitler's reign. The cinematography is crisp yet unimpressive and Singer's compositions achieve the nuts and bolts necessities of the plot but offer little to walk away with.

Et tu Brute?

While the film is clearly designed as a thriller and it succeeds in this regard, the bigger questions it raises are the ones which could have set it apart and elevated this film to the level of great drama. The question of when exactly does treason constitute an act of patriotism as opposed to one of overt criminality is left largely unexplored, yet its shadow hovers over every minute of the film. It is a fascinating distinction, that of the government and country. At what point does the former stop representing the latter? How important is morality in the legitimacy of a government? Whose morality counts? And what is a military person's breaking point in terms of how far s/he will go in following a leader's orders? There is passing mention of the shame and dishonor Stauffenberg's children will suffer if Hitler is allowed to live but there is little meditation on the evil Hitler represents and why exactly did so many Germans willingly enable him. Why, after all, did so many in the military follow Hitler and continue to do so even when the war was lost and in spite of the atrocities they were ordered to carry out? That is the more illuminating question. It is one which, had it been explored, would have, by way of contrast, made Stauffenberg's heroism shine all the more brightly.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, the film's focus is elsewhere and in that regard it would rather deal with the facile. When the leader is Hitler, treason is the obvious and necessary answer. I only wish the film had demonstrated the same valor as its protagonist and tackled, head-on, the tough questions so many films would rather leave for other filmmakers to explore. I know Mr. Singer has the ability. The question is, will he have the courage to do so? Time will tell.

Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate

In 1980, Michael Cimino, the director of the acclaimed The Deer Hunter, unveiled his vision of the American West. It was to have been a masterpiece, a Western of unparalleled artistry and depth. In the eyes of many American observers, however, it was an unqualified disaster. Some European critics, on the other hand, dubbed it a poetic masterpiece.

Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate is a film I love. I love it for what it could have been more so than what it actually is. I am a firm believer that bad films can be just as instructive in terms of good filmmaking as good films are and often times they are much more fascinating as well. Judged on its merits I think Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, unfortunately, drowns in its own greatness and profundity. Nonetheless, it is a noble effort which attempted to expand the boundaries of what can be done and discussed within the Western genre.

Let's face it, Heaven's Gate's "failure" in the U.S. is due, in no small part, to its length (3 1/2 hours), tone, and narrative peculiarities. The film throws traditional U.S. notions of narrative momentum, clarity, and character development out the window in favor of cryptic characterization, "deep" meaningful silences, and slow ponderous pacing akin to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Beautifully photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond, the film is a sepia-infused glory to behold. The compositions are impeccable and the setpieces, taken on their own, stand up to any David Lean epic. The use of sepia and dust-diffused light throughout the film are a clear indication that the film is one of nostalgia, literally a painful longing for things past and things faded. As Cimino put it, "what one loves about life are the things that fade."

Loss of Innocence, Class Warfare, and The Fading of the American Dream

Having begun production in 1979 it is a product of the 1970s cinema zeitgeist where, indicting a corrupt U.S. Government, "smashing the facade of the American Dream", and brooding on the futility of resistance was de rigueur for all "true" artists. Witness The Godfather Part II, Serpico, etc. Heaven's Gate overt stance against the romanticizing and mythologizing of the West in favor of a depiction of how it was truly won (money, guns, and ethnic killing) puts it in a genre all its own - the Anti-Western.

The film centers on a little known incident in April 1892, The Johnson County War, during which small farmers of Eastern European extraction faced off against cattle ranchers in Wyoming. The ranchers claiming, the immigrants were encroaching on their land and butchering their cattle, outsourced their violent proclivities and hired a band of mercenaries to wipe out the immigrants. Ultimately, however, the tide turned against the mercenaries and they had to be rescued by the U.S. Cavalry. A potentially inspiring story of the little guy beating the fat cats, right? Well, in the skilled hands of Michael Cimino even this inspiring story is cause existential despair.

In the narrative arc of the film, James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) goes from idealistic Harvard youth in the film's prologue, to ambivalent protector of the immigrants in Wyoming, to dejected and distant richman, adrift on the shores of 1910 Rhode Island. He ends up a man of shattered ideals.

Vietnam, Russians, and the Force of History

Throughout the film Averill is more of a detached and ambivalent observer than he is an actor taking an active part in moving the plot forward. Averill doesn't so much act as react to situations. This is simply a problematic setup to have. Why? Well, it can make for a terribly boring film given our Western disdain for passive people and characters.

Apocalypse Now and Doctor Zhivago share similarly passive characters. Though Apocalypse Now is a great film it is ultimately dependent on individual set pieces (e.g. the Ride of the Valkyries air assault, the tiger jumping out of the jungle, etc.) and Martin Sheen's ponderous voiceover. Once those elements disappear in the last third of the film, it is up to Marlon Brando (Colonel Kurtz) to pickup the slack and save the film. Doctor Zhivago with its similarly ambivalent and wealthy protagonist, its class warfare and sweeping epic narrative also fails in this regard.

These films succeed in spite of their protagonists (I've yet to meet anyone quoting lines from Apocalypse Now's Willard (Martin Sheen) ). Because these characters are just observers the film must show us the goods in other areas. Heaven's Gate compounds the "boring protagonist problem" by setting him in a film which goes to great lengths (literally) to sloooow things down. Even the potentially tense plot device (a la High Noon) of mercenaries making their way into town via locomotive to slaughter the disorganized immigrants just fades into the lugubrious background. The supporting characters are all unidimensional and if, indeed, there is depth to them we are never provided a glimpse of it.

The immigrants of the film are a nearly undifferentiated mass of screams, grubby clothing, and petty infighting. Cimino, in his attempt to show that even the immigrants are infected with greed for land, wipes out any possibility that the audience can at least empathize with the characters available. In The Godfather Trilogy, Michael Corleone is a murderous thug but at least we understand why he's a murderous thug. The thin characterization of Averill, the immigrants, and villains alike make it difficult to emotionally anchor oneself to anyone in the film.

With regards to plot and pacing I think Cimino commits one of the cardinal sins that many auteurs seem to commit as they grow in critical stature: they express an utter contempt for such "rabble-rousing" things as tension, emotion and, dare I say it, drama. No, no, because these auteurs are making serious films they must jettison those "manipulative" things called plot and emotion. Case in point, Michael Mann's outings in Miami Vice and Ali (how exactly do you make an icon like Muhammad Ali boring?). I have to give James Cameron credit on this point. The man is a master of plotting and character development. Even with his tremendous reputation, say what you will of his films, he never forgets that character and plot are the keys to a good film.

When characters, such as the immigrants, do act in this film they still fail. The immigrants and Averill's victory against the ranchers and their mercenaries is snatched from them by who else but the U.S. Cavalry. So, in the moral universe of Heaven's Gate it seems that even when you act you ultimately fail. As one character puts it "It's not me doing it to you, Jim. It's the rules." And who make the rules? The powerful, and they can't be beat. The force of History cannot be stopped. Cimino captures this sentiment with a visual metaphor he laces throughout the film of dancers, graduate celebrations, and battle scenes in which the participants go round and round in concentric circles. The infernal cycle cannot be stopped, it seems. This kind of comfortable pessimism on Cimino's part allows one to walk away from the film with the feeling that the poor will always be poor and even rich angels like Averill can't save them. So, why try? Examples of the downtrodden defeating the powerful have no place in Cimino's epic narrative.

Final Thoughts

So, what is Cimino left with once he adamantly refuses to highlight the tension in his own screenplay or bring to light the potential complexity and agency of his characters? Pretty pictures and a daring Anti-Western that for once highlights the undercurrent of class conflict which has always been an implicit staple in this genre.

It is ironic that Cimino's sentiment that "what one loves about life are the things that fade" would eventually come to describe the fate of his most cherished film. Indeed, Heaven's Gate, unfortunately, has faded into obscurity with only a dusty memory of its title and reputation remaining. History and Hollywood ultimately judged Cimino's magnum opus a failure. But what a noble failure it was and how close he came to succeeding. If only there had been some soul in this beautifully photographed Das Kapital of Westerns...

History, perhaps, might have turned out differently.