For Shame

The Reader as a Book

Like most of the world, my continuing response to the Holocaust is “how could that be?”  Where was human decency?  I’ve learned that there isn’t one answer, but many large and small ones.  The Reader by Bernhard Schlink provides an insight.  When Hanna answers the judge with a truly wondering “what would you have done?” the reader (or viewer in the movie) has to live in her shoes and, hopefully, truly wonder.  It is a question from Hanna to everyone who stands by in life, and it is a question from the Nazi era generation to future German generations.

The Reader is the story of Micheal, a teenager who has an illicit affair with Hanna, a woman more than twice his age.  They have sex (Kate Winslet has her own sex sub-genre this year between “Revolutionary Road” and “The Reader”) and he reads to her.  Hanna suddenly disappears largely due to a desire to keep her own secret.  Years later, Michael attends a Nazi criminal trial and Hanna is one of the plaintiffs.  He discovers her secret, knows that it would reduce her sentencing, possibly her culpability (I don’t think so, personally) and yet says nothing.   Hanna receives a life sentence while her fellow plaintiffs receive four years.  For years, he reads into a tape recorder and sends Hanna the tapes.  He does not interact with her until just before her release over twenty years later.

SPOILER ALERT – I REVEAL THE SECRET, BUT IT ISN’T MUCH OF A REVELATION, JUST THINK ABOUT THE TITLE FOR A MINUTE

The Reader as a Movie

The book and the subsequent movie, screenplay written by David Hare and nominated for the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, show the power of shame.  Hanna is deeply ashamed of her illiteracy.  This secret motivates her to manipulate the people around her.  She offers extra food to the girls in the camps so that they will  read to her.  She offers sex to Michael for the enjoyment of the act, but also to have him come by daily and read to her.  She takes far greater responsibility for the war crimes committed by herself and her fellow guards because to escape the blame, she would have to reveal her illiteracy. 

The shame of this ignorance skewed Hann’s sense of morality.  During the trial scene, she preferred being the worst Nazi guard to saying “I can’t write.”  During the prison meeting twenty years after the trial with Michael, he asked whether she has thought about what happened and she responds “Yes, I can read.”  He is confused, he was talking about her actions as a Nazi guard, but she was talking about her illiterac.  In in her mind, that was her greatest sin, not the death of innocent women.  He explains to her that he meant the prisoners that died.  She gruffly says it doesn’t matter, they would still be dead.  While she is correct, her remorse won’t bring the people back to life, but the lack of effort or sense of guilt is shocking.

Shame plagues Michael throughout his life.  The movie opens with a morning scene between his current 1990s self and his latest girlfriend.  His distance and their interaction immediately inform the viewer that he is a closed, private person; polite, but keeping everyone at a distance.  While he isn’t bothered by the affair with Hanna as it occurs, clearly he knows it is wrong because he never tells anyone about it, not a friend at school or any adult in his life.  Not even when it ended and he was devastated.  Later, when he discovers that Hanna was a Nazi guard, he is tormented by the relationship.  How could he or how can he care for someone who did such awful things during the war?  It is a question that the German generations following WWII have had to pose and struggle with.  How can I love my Dad or Grandfather who, at best, stood by during the Nazi era?  I thought the movie did an effective job of showing this angst by having Michael walk through a concentration camp, alone, without dialogue, showing the beds, the showers, the ovens, and the mountains of shoes.  He saw a shadow of the horror, yet he still cared for Hanna.  He couldn’t visit her, but he couldn’t forget her, and he couldn’t bond with anyone else.

Lest the viewer feel too much empathy for Hanna, a survivor’s opinion is presented through a Jewish prisoner.  She also doesn’t care about whether Hanna feels remorse because it won’t bring anyone back to life.  Almost identical words, yet the impact is different.  Here the implication is that Hanna should feel remorse and guilt as some sort of penance and punishment, it isn’t meaningless, but it could never be enough. 

Predicting the Winner of the Oscar for the Best Adapted Screenplay

Claire and I are close to choosing who we think will win the Oscar.  We thought about deciding by drawing straws, or pulling a name out of a hat, or a drinking game, but then we realized if we have more than one glass of wine we’re up between 3AM and 6AM and you can imagine how fun we are the next day, so we’ll just go with our gut.  I previously wrote about “Doubt,” “Frost/Nixon,” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”  I still need to see “Slumdog Millionaire” and as winner of the Golden Globe for Writing that movie is the favorite.  Right now, I’m leaning towards “The Reader.” I think the issues are more subtle, yet still well represented in the movie.  But that may not be my final decision.