Cinema Mishmash

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The Reader

February 13th, 2009 · No Comments

There isn’t anything really new about The Reader. There hasn’t been a film I’ve seen in recent memory that readerseemed to reference so many other films.  The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Fanny and Alexander, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Lives of Others, Spider . . . these are the first ones that come to mind, some with an obvious link and others more obscure or intuitive, but I have a sense that almost every scene of this film is an allusion to another work. And while that might seem to be a complaint, I think it might explain – or even be the result of – the way the film rather purposefully draws in its audience to share an emotional engagement with characters that are in many ways hopelessly isolated. One of the tools used particularly well is sound. There is an intercutting of two scenes – the initial liaison between young Michael and Hannah and then Michael’s family dinner table – in which the clinking of dishes and the exchanging of passionate breath creates a hyper-real symphony of ordinary sounds that not only highlights the mounting conflict between Michael’s inner and outer personalities, but also symbolizes the post-war German culture, stifled from expression by the fear of attracting the wrong type of attention. And despite the sense of familiarity evoked by its storytelling parts, there was more being said just below the surface of The Reader than I had expected.

Tags: Capsule · Drama

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