The Reader

I saw The Reader last night and was sadly, unimpressed. Maybe it’s my Cassavetes obsession or my love for the kind of adhoc aesthetic of the Maysles brothers, but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed by the Hollywood conventional-ness of it all.

Adapted from Bernard Schlink’s excellent novel, the story follows a teenage boy’s sexual awakening and subsequent discovery of his older lover’s Nazi past. Michael (David Kross) meets Hanna (Kate Winslet) when he throws up outside her house one afternoon. She takes him home (he has scarlet fever) and once he is better the two embark on an affair.  Hanna likes being read to, and the two spend a lovely summer of books and sex, after which Hanna disappears. After the affair, Michael goes around steeped in a Goethe-like melancholy. As the adult Michael Ralph Fiennes does a sterling job of this – he even somehow looks German, a trick which Kate Winslet never manages, despite her floral dresses and sturdy sandals. Years later, Michael attends the trial of some Nazi guards as part of his University studies. Hanna is one of the women being tried, and despite the fact it could affect the outcome of her sentence, she refuses to reveal her illiteracy. She is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. After some years, Michael begins to send her tapes of the books he read to her the summer of the affair, and slowly, she learns to read.

Schlink’s book is full of powerful imagery, and considering Germany’s rich cinematic history it seems almost wasteful to have the film made by an Englishman whose contributions (despite his repeated Oscar nominations) to cinema have been solid at best. ‘Solid’ is a good way to describe The Reader. Shot with pleasant lighting, a blue-grey colour palette, bland mise-en-scene, and driven along by a manipulative syrup of a score, the fact that it is a ‘good’ movie is perhaps its worst flaw. I was simply underwhelmed by the blandness of it all. Wim Wenders writes that there are films that open your eyes and films that gummy them up, noting that the best films make you think differently, while the rest reinforce a kind of status quo.

The Reader is one of the latter, when it ought to be one of the former. Schlink’s story explores the moral and emotional ambiguities of post Nazi Germany, but the film never really gives us a good idea of the climate in which it’s set. The characters ask, ‘Given the circumstances of our lives, how do we best live?’ Questions of complicity, guilt, shame and responsibility are twisted together like a Celtic love-knot, but the film waters all this turgid emotion into one and a half hours of flaccid drivel. It plays to the audience in the crudest cinematic way, and while it works on this level – the two lovely women on either side of me were in tears – I’d forgotten it by the time I got home.

Some Noise about West

Noise takes place in claustrophobic spaces.  There is the train carriage where a lone gunman kills eight passengers, the tiny caravan the police set up in the missing gunman’s neighbourhood, and the constantly darkened home of the film’s antihero.  In the aftermath of a tragic train shooting Graham McGahan (Brendan Cowell), a disaffected cop suffering from tinnitus, is posted to a caravan in a suburban shopping strip where the police are looking for the gunman.  These close environments reflect Graham’s increasingly interiorised state, as the persistent ringing in his ears and his apathy toward his work draw him inward.  The soundtrack works to further pull the audience into Graham’s world – at times the tinnitus drowns out all other sounds and we find ourselves looking blankly at a character’s moving mouth while hearing a high pitched buzz.

Unfortunately, the other characters get lost in the noise, and this is a problem.  The event that gives rise to this story is a horrific, violent act and those directly affected by the event, Lavinia (Maia Thomas) and  Dean (Luke Elliot), as well as the other police officers are interesting characters.  In fact, almost all the other characters in the film seem to be more interesting than the passive, self absorbed Graham.  By the end of the film, I didn’t care about him at all.  Perhaps he was supposed to be elusive and subtle, but for me, it was another case of the good old passive Australian hero.  Really, there is nothing wrong with characters doing something in a film – we watch people not doing things enough in life.

West, on the other hand is full of characters who, despite their circumstances, do act, however grim their actions may be.  Pete (Khan Chittenden) and Jerry (Nathan Phillips) are cousins and best friends, who live, drink and smoke together.  When Cheryl (Gillian Alexy) bursts onto the scene, both boys lust after her, but after flirting briefly with Pete, she chooses Jerry.  Jerry desperately wants out of the suburbs and a life of boozing and drug dealing, so he takes a job at a seedy fast food restaurant.  After a run in with the thuggish Kenwood (Anthony Hayes), Pete starts dealing speed as well as dope although he too wants to get out – he just thinks getting a lot of cash quick will be his ticket to freedom.  Drugs, alcohol, desire and frustration lead from one disaster to the next, and the boys find themselves drifting further from their goals and each other.

David Stratton of At the Movies, found West somewhat depressing, but despite the tragedy of the events, it is in many ways an uplifting story.  Both Pete and Jerry attempt to take control of their lives and change their situation, albeit in different ways.  They both desire to leave the suburbs and make something of themselves, but at the same time they are products of their environment – a world that has filled them with a dangerous repressed rage.  The storm water drain where they drink and fuck, and where Pete eventually bashes Kenwood to death is a sort of metaphor for their desire for something better – several shots look down the tunnel to the spot of light at the opening, and although this sounds like a cliché, it works.

As characters the boys are believable, warm and likeable.  Cheryl is a free spirit, constantly seeking excitement, but by the end she seems to be growing into a responsible adult. Writer-director Daniel Krige knows and loves his characters and draws convincing performances from his cast.  Michael Dorman is brilliant as Mick, the stuttering, socially awkward friend who gets randomly hit by a car and is transformed as a result.  Dorman also appears in Suburban Mayhem as Rory, and he is a wonderful actor – both loveable and unhinged at the same time.

Both Noise and West came out in 2007, and Noise definitely had the bigger buzz surrounding it.  I’m not sure why this was – for me, West is a far better film.  See it.