It's not for nothing that Kate Winslet won an Oscar for The Reader [critique]

Stephen Daldry's drama returns this evening on Arte, followed by a beautiful portrait of the British actress.

What would you have done under occupation? How would you have acted under the Nazi yoke? The Reader places the viewer in this uncomfortable position with a Kate Winslet at the top of his art. She also won the Oscar for best actress for this role in 2009.

This drama can be seen again this Wednesday evening on Arte, followed at 10:55 p.m. by the documentary Kate Winslet, definitely an actressalready available for free in replay. A great movie evening in store for all Kate fans.

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When it was released, First had obviously praised the performance of the actors but also the adaptation of the novel by Bernhard Schlink :

“From Stephen Daldry, we loved Billy Elliot And The Hoursworks as singular as they are brilliant. (…) The filmmaker has lost none of his technical know-how or his ability to interweave eras, The Reader playing flashbacks and passages from the 90s to the 50s and 60s with astonishing fluidity. Daldry also asserts his taste for well-thought-out plans, bordering on the symbolic, and his ability to surround himself with the best technicians.

He finally confirms his talent as an actor director: it is not for nothing that Kate Winslet won an Oscar for this role, as Nicole Kidman had one for The Hours. But we obviously cannot just look at The Reader from a simple technical or aesthetic point of view. Like the book from which it comes, the film once again takes the sword where it hurts, in the never-healed wound of German history. (…)

It questions the never-resolved question of the individual and collective guilt of the Germans in Nazi crimes. It also probes ordinary monstrosity as well as the complex relationships between the generations born after the war and that of their parents who participated, directly or indirectly, in the extermination of the Jews. Schlink's book was quite ambiguous on these themes, making its readers hostage to an omnipresent emotion and an irresistible empathy towards Hanna, both executioner and victim. Although it suffers from similar flaws, Daldry's film transcends the novel by creating a lasting unease…”

Trailer:

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