The Reader vs The End Of The Affair

Wow. I am uncomfortable. Will you believe me if I tell you that The Reader is just a little like one of those “The more you know” commercials on NBC, and that the point is sometimes Nazis are misunderstood, and maybe they’re Nazis because they have learning disabilities? Well it’s true. Just a little though. I don’t want to feel sentimental about the Holocaust. I just don’t. Does that make me weird? Some of you felt that way about Life is Beautiful, remember? Luckily, The Reader doesn’t attempt to make us laugh, and even luckier, it’s got Kate Winslet as its center.

Kate Winslet is Hanna Schmitz, a gruff, blunt woman of great discipline, working on a train in Germany. When she first meets Michael (David Kross), he’s sick in an alley. Hanna is so rough and efficient when she helps him, scrubbing his face and dumping a bucket of water on his puke, my first thought, honestly, was “She’s a Nazi.” That, coupled with the fact that it’s basically in the trailer, should keep me from worrying about spoiling the fact that yes, Hanna Schmitz was a guard in a concentration camp. We know the revelation is coming, and have roughly half the movie to process how to deal with it. During this time, Hanna and Michael begin an affair. For him, it’s first love, for her, it’s more complicated. Hanna definitely enjoys Michael’s company. She likes the sex, and more importantly, that he’s a scholar. Hanna admires Michael’s intelligence, and loves the eloquence in his reading. Michael thinks it’s odd that Hanna loves being read too so much, but he has to read for his homework anyway, and she’s twice his age and built like Kate Winslet, so he agrees.

Years pass, and Michael’s a law student attending a trial for a class. It’s a trial of Nazi war criminals, all of them female, one of them Michael’s first love, Hanna (their affair was before the war). She was partly responsible for the deaths of three-hundred Jewish women and girls, and even signed her name to a description of the crimes, though she seems distraught and confused by the contents of her charges and apparent confession. Michael is horrified and saddened, and we wonder if he’ll reveal his presence to Hanna, or her identity to his colleagues, or if he’ll help her case, or if she deserves anyone’s help at all.

A spoiler: you guys know she can’t read, right? We already know it’s called The Reader, and in the trailer, we learn that Michael is said reader (well, one of them, but none of them are Hanna Schmitz). I kept waiting for him to just ask her, maybe even teach her to read, but it remains unspoken. Eventually, of course, it’s made clearer, during the trial, and I thought two things: 1. Wow, that’s really sad. Hanna’s taking a fall because she can’t fully comprehend the charges and claims against her without being able to read; and 2. Yuck. Is this what the movie is really about? The big revelation about Hanna isn’t that she killed hundreds of people, but that she can’t read? 

Earlier in the film, The Reader carries a bit of decadence with it. Hanna and Michael have lots of sex, and even go on vacation together, but she’s never truly open, and never seems fully in love with him. She’s got such an edge, and so much anger, that it’s kind of his dirty secret that he’s got a girlfriend. Hanna is always naked, but despite having Kate Winslet’s body, has no softness or warmth. She’s all business. There’s an inner sadness to her, but she maintains an air of authority. It’s kind of hot, honestly. And I thought, once the trial got going, that we might see a juxtaposition of that, plotwise. Maybe Hanna being the same way with Michael that she was with her prisoners would be one of those perverse movie tricks that made The Reader into one of those dark, fascinating, not-for-the-squeamish movies like The Night Porter or Death and the Maiden. Instead, Hanna, while guilty of definite atrocities, becomes a victim of sorts, and starts building sympathy. And Michael, instead of being repulsed by what was sort of his own victimhood, is more sad than angry. It’s interesting, but it’s a lot squirmier than the film we started with. See, the reading that Michael did for Hanna, that sparked their romance and carries such significance in The Reader, is not so different than the reading Hanna requested from the Jewish girls she was guarding. And eventually killed.

Awkward.

The Reader was directed by Stephen Daldry, who, like Alexander Payne, hasn’t directed anything yet that I haven’t liked. This time, however, he’s really falling back on his actors for support. The Reader is nicely photographed, but there are cumbersome scenes of Michael learning about law and discussing ethics with his fellow students; I never could figure out why it was necessary to use more than one location to show that he was being educated and evolved as a human while Hanna was stagnating in prison. We see it across the kid’s face during her trial. We don’t also need it in classrooms and dorms. The result is possibly character-building, but definitely disruptive to the existing flow and tone of the movie.

The strengths of The Reader lie, for me, almost completely in the acting. Kate Winslet rarely raises her voice as Hanna. She’s direct and interesting in every scene, but never goes for histrionics or scene-chewing, even though it’s all right there for the taking. Winslet shares almost all her scenes with a meek teenager. She easily could have stolen the show, overdoing the accent or slamming tables and choking back tears during her bigger scenes. Instead, she’s in the pursuit of honesty, which is expected from Kate Winslet, but so often not what we get from other actors. Hanna Schmitz is being referred to (and awarded) as a supporting role, but that’s ridiculous. The Reader stars Kate Winslet, and she has the main character. David Kross plays the younger version of Michael. He’s a teenager, and apparently learned English for the part. He’s great. It doesn’t hurt that he’s got Kate Winslet to play off of in most of his scenes, I’m sure. Ralph Fiennes plays older Michael, and brings a richness and gravity to the film, but doesn’t get to do as much as I’d hoped. Lena Olin appears near the end, and holds the movie in the palm of her hand for a small, important scene.

The End of the Affair is another film set around World War II, and another film with a life-changing affair. It’s also got Ralph Fiennes, but this time with much more to sink his teeth into, namely, Julianne Moore.

Julianne Moore is Sarah, married to Henry (Stephen Rea), having an affair with Miles (Fiennes). It’s wartime in London, and Sarah and Miles find their affair wherever they can, with bombs going off and the danger being not just that they’ll be caught, but that they’ll be killed. In one scene, it appears as if Miles has in fact been killed, and Sarah, in a rush of religious guilt and regret, makes a prayerful promise that might have been responsible for bringing him back. Whether she’ll keep her promise (I won’t say it here), even though, dude, Sarah, it might have been a coincidence, is the central conflict of her character and of the film itself. Also at hand is the fact that Miles and Henry are friends. Much of The End of the Affair is told in flashback, without us knowing what became of Sarah’s life, internally or externally. This is one of Julianne Moore’s great performances, and another that finds her embracing another era seamlessly. I’ve not seen a time period yet that finds Moore out of place. It’s partly because her looks are so distinctive that instead of blending into a period, she stands out, creating herself as the focus each time. The other reason is that she’s such a commanding actor.  I’ve watched her scenes in Children of Men a dozen times now. She energizes that film when she’s on camera, and haunts it when she’s gone, and has as similar effect here.

The End of the Affair was directed by Neil Jordan, so it should come as no surprise that it’s equal or greater to The Reader in terms of conflicted sexual affairs. It’s not just that Sarah and Miles are adulterers, or that there’s a war on, it’s the whole religion thing. What becomes of her, and how well she did with that promise, and if it was worth it are questions answered and revealed like they might be in a thriller. The End of the Affair is one of those movies that appears, to those who haven’t seen it, like a stuffy old romance. But it’s rich with characters and drama, and at its heart, an affair so bristling and dangerous, it’s no doubt something Ralph Fiennes thought about while preparing for The Reader. The religion part is a little shaky for me, though not as much so as the Nazi stuff in The Reader. Sarah’s religious fervor is so intense I thought, for a few scenes, that she might abandon her romance and become a nun. Sarah, relax. You had an affair; you didn’t kill three hundred people. Guilt is relative, I suppose. It’s a shame you can’t take a little of it out of The End of the Affair and dole just a touch more onto The Reader.

The Reader: B

The End of the Affair: B+