Jason KingThe Reader ($2-)
February 22nd 2009 09:52
Category: No Category
The Reader ($2-)
Written by Dave......
Jason's note: Ouch - harsh - will have to watch it now Dave so I can argue with you! I have been looking forward to this for ages.
Note: This review is semi structured like the film it is reviewing: The Reader.
The engaging set up:
The Reader is one of those films. The one in which you are well aware that it is designed to win statuettes. With overrated performances and an extremely overwritten script… yet a subject matter laid on such holy ground that to attack it frightens so many people.
You see; to attack this film is almost to support the actions of the Nazi’s. No, this is not a holocaust film per se, but people are going to mistake it for one…and the mentality it requires you to have when viewing it is that of extreme sympathy, for clarification I am in no way a Nazi Sympathizer. Not in the slightest, in fact the blatant exploitation of the victims of the Holocaust in this film is the reason for my distaste…especially when it’s clearly done to appeal to the so-called “Jewish” Hollywood types to win awards. Bear with me on this as I digress.
The set up:
David Kross plays a young boy Michel whom whilst still in high school begins a love affair with the much older train Guard Hanna Schmitz; played by Kate Winslet.
On his way home from school one day, (in the rain for presumably dramatic reasons) he begins vomiting on the side of the street, Hanna Schmitz, walking by; picks him up and ensures his well being.
The next day Michel returns to say thank you, but they end up sleeping together. Hanna enjoys being read to, and Michel enjoys reading. He promptly arrives after school everyday to read to her/ fuck her…not necessarily in that order, but that is ALL that happens for the first half of the film.
The relationship, just like it begins, ends for no reason (Or a reason so painfully bad that it cannot be taken seriously for a second and thus undermines the rest of the picture).
Re- establishing:
Fast forward, but really backwards, through the films 1995 setting via cheesy unnecessary condescending flashback ten years time …Michel is studying Law.
Michel comes across Hanna whilst observing court in which she is standing before trial for horrible war crimes…to mention the crimes would spoil the film, but considering that this is the first engaging element of the picture and it’s revealed half way into the picture, and for this it is not worth telling…without having to tell you the obvious and ridiculous twist. Because basically the outcome is the end of the film really, everything that follows is further hammering of the oft-nailed nail that is the films themes. Shame. Pride. Morality etc all things in which you completely understand within twenty minutes of the picture, then having to endure the constant reminders and underlining of them for the rest of the film. And it’s nearly two and a half hours long, and because of the above manages to feel like twenty, you add the laborious flashback structure, the unnecessary placeholder scenes; as well as the hundred “endings” (Final scene is a more appropriate term) and the picture feels like a near eternity.
The Reader may very well be the most boring and tedious film of last year. (Last year because it’s an American film and was released in 2008 over there…at the real end…for Oscar season).
Further re-establishment:
The first ten minutes of the flick establishes a relationship between the two principal cast members…but founds it upon nothing…therefore undermining the rest of the picture. Winslet goes an extreme length in this picture, baring everything (literally and figuratively) and deserves the accolades she is getting for her performance (even though this reviewer believes her role in Revolutionary Road to be a better performance) but her performance alone is not enough to save the film…
David Kross is also fine in the film, but is mostly a blank canvas. Ralph Fiennes is fantastic as the older Michel (the entire film is told in flashbacks by him) He gives a very fine understated performance.
But it is the script that wrecks every performance here.
It’s empty.
It attempts to make commentary on moral ambiguities, war crimes, law, sex and relationships, but does so in such broad and wild strokes that it ends up saying nothing at all. And on top of all this it BELIEVES that it is incredibly complex. It is unbelievably pretentious and patronizing.
By this I mean it constantly reminds you of what is happening in the picture in case you were to stupid to remember what you just saw. The first scene is repeated to you in the second scene. Then the third scene repeats the first and second scene, then the fourth scene repeats the first, second, and third; and so on and on, until the ideas and themes are hammered into your brain so hard that the film feels as if it has been going on for an eternity and you cannot wait to leave…and if Ralph Fiennes explains to you minute details of a previous flashback scene ONE MORE TIME you will scream and throw your drink at the screen.
I think it’s necessary to throw in an example or two.
Michel reads her Lady Chatterley’s lover by D.H. Lawrence, a book once banned during its release for lurid sections, which by today’s standards are tame. Hanna tells him to stop reading it as it is ‘disgusting filth’. And what the two characters did in the previous five scenes is not? You sleep with a fifteen year old boy, and other things too which should not be spoiled…but D.H Lawrence makes you disgusted? It’s inconsistency like that which is prevalent all over the film. There are many instances like this in which the writer, thinking they are smarter than everyone else; quotes/ references a classic text…only presumably because the film is called “The Reader”. There is also a moment in which Michel reads Tintin to her, buts it’s done in such a “it’s not a classic because it has pictures” sort of mentality…and there is so much book love…the entire first half labors the point that reading is the greatest possible thing in the world…the excessive laboring mentioned earlier comes to the fore ground in moments like this: to greatly blab on about how brilliant reading is once is fine, twice is okay, the third time may make you go “Okay we get it” but by the seventh or eighth time you begin to wonder what the hell you are doing in the theater in the first place when reading books is so good. Obviously not the intent of the filmmaker but it comes across unwillingly because of its pretentious and overwritten script. I cannot begin to tell you how often the film hammers a point so hard that I just got the point and wanted to leave the theater…
Enough hammering? Let’s hammer some more…
On top of this the scenes go on for far longer than they should. Once something is said. It is said again and again, then represented symbolically etc, towards the end of the picture your head hurts because nothing has happened and the film believes something has. I’m repeating myself here aren’t I? Maybe I’m saying the same thing over and over again? Well congratulations for getting this far into my review, you feel what watching The Reader is like. Now times it by ten.
Moving on…
The entire film is talking after talking after talking. Nothing is represented visually at all. It’s like an extended Hallmark Movie masquerading as Oscar gold because of the cast it has attached…It’s visually boring and very cold but has a message that’s obvious from the cover. Happy Birthday. Congratulations. So long and thanks for the fish.
Ultimately the most negative aspect is nothing makes true sense when you think about it.
The crystallization moment where it all gels together:
Remember I said there is a twist to Hannah Schmitz? That sends the film into this catastrophic spiral it never recovers from: for a character in her position to do what she does: especially in the beginning, (the following will make sense if you have seen the picture) Hanna being a train guard; having to check tickets and what not… even her boss offers her a promotion for her fantastic reports she has written…It doesn’t make logical sense come the second half. Same with Michel:
Michel on the other hand has two gorgeous young intelligent girls throughout the film that come on to him, and Michel never follows through with them for no reason other than that he is with Hanna, and because that relationship is founded so poorly no substantial reasons can be made for why they are together other than the sex is good, or that he feels needed by reading to her. But all she does is treat him like shit and never offers anything to him.
It’s that little word: Inconsistency.
The extensive courtroom proceedings seem outrageous, and this most likely comes out of the films deep desire to place all the blame of the Nazi’s actions on Hitler. A typical Hollywood stand point… as we all know it’s easier to blame one guy thematically then an entire battalion or God forbid get into any philosophical discussion. Valkyrie was critical of this also.
The director Stephen Daldry could seemingly not get his Hours collaborator; the brilliant Phillip Glass; to write the score for this film, so what he has done is gotten Nico Muhly to completely copy, ahem, rip-off Phillip Glass…only to prove that only Philip Glass can achieve an extremely heartfelt and poignant monotonic score… Muhly’s is purely repetitious cold and empty also like the film… it’s also overly used and makes obvious and droning scenes (nearly every scene) even more unbearable and tedious.
For the conclusion; the last act:
The Reader seems to end dramatically with a visit… then continues on for another twenty minutes. Hanna’s final actions as a character damage everything the film has set up (very little), it also undermines everything about her and Michel’s characters (also very little to undermine). This coupled with the twenty odd endings it has and just the general awfulness of the picture, you have a travesty. There is just nothing left at the end.
The fact that it gets nominated five times over such films as Revolutionary Road, The Dark Knight and The Wrestler and Changeling just increases rage and adds insult into the viewer, particularly this viewer…but in the end the Oscars mean nothing, people still talk about Brokeback Mountain, and yet every time stick my head into a bargain bin; I undoubtedly see Paul Haggis’ Crash starring right back at me. Excuse my rant.
How’s this for a clear ending?
In the end it seems as if the setting of The Reader around the Holocaust is merely to pander to the academy and Hollywood types, as the film really is not about the holocaust, it’s about a relationship between a woman and a man and how extenuating circumstances can impede or strengthen that, it’s also about secrets and blah blah blah. It’s not really about anything, just a bunch of half baked ideas crammed into a slow burning cold first draft of script that was poorly executed, but well acted…
…And I suppose for a film that continually extrapolates the virtues of reading, being a poorly made and boring film is not so far from what you would expect.
The only worthwhile thing in the entire picture is Kate Winslet. Worth $2-
Written by Dave......
Jason's note: Ouch - harsh - will have to watch it now Dave so I can argue with you! I have been looking forward to this for ages.
Note: This review is semi structured like the film it is reviewing: The Reader.
The engaging set up:
The Reader is one of those films. The one in which you are well aware that it is designed to win statuettes. With overrated performances and an extremely overwritten script… yet a subject matter laid on such holy ground that to attack it frightens so many people.
You see; to attack this film is almost to support the actions of the Nazi’s. No, this is not a holocaust film per se, but people are going to mistake it for one…and the mentality it requires you to have when viewing it is that of extreme sympathy, for clarification I am in no way a Nazi Sympathizer. Not in the slightest, in fact the blatant exploitation of the victims of the Holocaust in this film is the reason for my distaste…especially when it’s clearly done to appeal to the so-called “Jewish” Hollywood types to win awards. Bear with me on this as I digress.
The set up:
David Kross plays a young boy Michel whom whilst still in high school begins a love affair with the much older train Guard Hanna Schmitz; played by Kate Winslet.
On his way home from school one day, (in the rain for presumably dramatic reasons) he begins vomiting on the side of the street, Hanna Schmitz, walking by; picks him up and ensures his well being.
The next day Michel returns to say thank you, but they end up sleeping together. Hanna enjoys being read to, and Michel enjoys reading. He promptly arrives after school everyday to read to her/ fuck her…not necessarily in that order, but that is ALL that happens for the first half of the film.
The relationship, just like it begins, ends for no reason (Or a reason so painfully bad that it cannot be taken seriously for a second and thus undermines the rest of the picture).
Re- establishing:
Fast forward, but really backwards, through the films 1995 setting via cheesy unnecessary condescending flashback ten years time …Michel is studying Law.
Michel comes across Hanna whilst observing court in which she is standing before trial for horrible war crimes…to mention the crimes would spoil the film, but considering that this is the first engaging element of the picture and it’s revealed half way into the picture, and for this it is not worth telling…without having to tell you the obvious and ridiculous twist. Because basically the outcome is the end of the film really, everything that follows is further hammering of the oft-nailed nail that is the films themes. Shame. Pride. Morality etc all things in which you completely understand within twenty minutes of the picture, then having to endure the constant reminders and underlining of them for the rest of the film. And it’s nearly two and a half hours long, and because of the above manages to feel like twenty, you add the laborious flashback structure, the unnecessary placeholder scenes; as well as the hundred “endings” (Final scene is a more appropriate term) and the picture feels like a near eternity.
The Reader may very well be the most boring and tedious film of last year. (Last year because it’s an American film and was released in 2008 over there…at the real end…for Oscar season).
Further re-establishment:
The first ten minutes of the flick establishes a relationship between the two principal cast members…but founds it upon nothing…therefore undermining the rest of the picture. Winslet goes an extreme length in this picture, baring everything (literally and figuratively) and deserves the accolades she is getting for her performance (even though this reviewer believes her role in Revolutionary Road to be a better performance) but her performance alone is not enough to save the film…
David Kross is also fine in the film, but is mostly a blank canvas. Ralph Fiennes is fantastic as the older Michel (the entire film is told in flashbacks by him) He gives a very fine understated performance.
But it is the script that wrecks every performance here.
It’s empty.
It attempts to make commentary on moral ambiguities, war crimes, law, sex and relationships, but does so in such broad and wild strokes that it ends up saying nothing at all. And on top of all this it BELIEVES that it is incredibly complex. It is unbelievably pretentious and patronizing.
By this I mean it constantly reminds you of what is happening in the picture in case you were to stupid to remember what you just saw. The first scene is repeated to you in the second scene. Then the third scene repeats the first and second scene, then the fourth scene repeats the first, second, and third; and so on and on, until the ideas and themes are hammered into your brain so hard that the film feels as if it has been going on for an eternity and you cannot wait to leave…and if Ralph Fiennes explains to you minute details of a previous flashback scene ONE MORE TIME you will scream and throw your drink at the screen.
I think it’s necessary to throw in an example or two.
Michel reads her Lady Chatterley’s lover by D.H. Lawrence, a book once banned during its release for lurid sections, which by today’s standards are tame. Hanna tells him to stop reading it as it is ‘disgusting filth’. And what the two characters did in the previous five scenes is not? You sleep with a fifteen year old boy, and other things too which should not be spoiled…but D.H Lawrence makes you disgusted? It’s inconsistency like that which is prevalent all over the film. There are many instances like this in which the writer, thinking they are smarter than everyone else; quotes/ references a classic text…only presumably because the film is called “The Reader”. There is also a moment in which Michel reads Tintin to her, buts it’s done in such a “it’s not a classic because it has pictures” sort of mentality…and there is so much book love…the entire first half labors the point that reading is the greatest possible thing in the world…the excessive laboring mentioned earlier comes to the fore ground in moments like this: to greatly blab on about how brilliant reading is once is fine, twice is okay, the third time may make you go “Okay we get it” but by the seventh or eighth time you begin to wonder what the hell you are doing in the theater in the first place when reading books is so good. Obviously not the intent of the filmmaker but it comes across unwillingly because of its pretentious and overwritten script. I cannot begin to tell you how often the film hammers a point so hard that I just got the point and wanted to leave the theater…
Enough hammering? Let’s hammer some more…
On top of this the scenes go on for far longer than they should. Once something is said. It is said again and again, then represented symbolically etc, towards the end of the picture your head hurts because nothing has happened and the film believes something has. I’m repeating myself here aren’t I? Maybe I’m saying the same thing over and over again? Well congratulations for getting this far into my review, you feel what watching The Reader is like. Now times it by ten.
Moving on…
The entire film is talking after talking after talking. Nothing is represented visually at all. It’s like an extended Hallmark Movie masquerading as Oscar gold because of the cast it has attached…It’s visually boring and very cold but has a message that’s obvious from the cover. Happy Birthday. Congratulations. So long and thanks for the fish.
Ultimately the most negative aspect is nothing makes true sense when you think about it.
The crystallization moment where it all gels together:
Remember I said there is a twist to Hannah Schmitz? That sends the film into this catastrophic spiral it never recovers from: for a character in her position to do what she does: especially in the beginning, (the following will make sense if you have seen the picture) Hanna being a train guard; having to check tickets and what not… even her boss offers her a promotion for her fantastic reports she has written…It doesn’t make logical sense come the second half. Same with Michel:
Michel on the other hand has two gorgeous young intelligent girls throughout the film that come on to him, and Michel never follows through with them for no reason other than that he is with Hanna, and because that relationship is founded so poorly no substantial reasons can be made for why they are together other than the sex is good, or that he feels needed by reading to her. But all she does is treat him like shit and never offers anything to him.
It’s that little word: Inconsistency.
The extensive courtroom proceedings seem outrageous, and this most likely comes out of the films deep desire to place all the blame of the Nazi’s actions on Hitler. A typical Hollywood stand point… as we all know it’s easier to blame one guy thematically then an entire battalion or God forbid get into any philosophical discussion. Valkyrie was critical of this also.
The director Stephen Daldry could seemingly not get his Hours collaborator; the brilliant Phillip Glass; to write the score for this film, so what he has done is gotten Nico Muhly to completely copy, ahem, rip-off Phillip Glass…only to prove that only Philip Glass can achieve an extremely heartfelt and poignant monotonic score… Muhly’s is purely repetitious cold and empty also like the film… it’s also overly used and makes obvious and droning scenes (nearly every scene) even more unbearable and tedious.
For the conclusion; the last act:
The Reader seems to end dramatically with a visit… then continues on for another twenty minutes. Hanna’s final actions as a character damage everything the film has set up (very little), it also undermines everything about her and Michel’s characters (also very little to undermine). This coupled with the twenty odd endings it has and just the general awfulness of the picture, you have a travesty. There is just nothing left at the end.
The fact that it gets nominated five times over such films as Revolutionary Road, The Dark Knight and The Wrestler and Changeling just increases rage and adds insult into the viewer, particularly this viewer…but in the end the Oscars mean nothing, people still talk about Brokeback Mountain, and yet every time stick my head into a bargain bin; I undoubtedly see Paul Haggis’ Crash starring right back at me. Excuse my rant.
How’s this for a clear ending?
In the end it seems as if the setting of The Reader around the Holocaust is merely to pander to the academy and Hollywood types, as the film really is not about the holocaust, it’s about a relationship between a woman and a man and how extenuating circumstances can impede or strengthen that, it’s also about secrets and blah blah blah. It’s not really about anything, just a bunch of half baked ideas crammed into a slow burning cold first draft of script that was poorly executed, but well acted…
…And I suppose for a film that continually extrapolates the virtues of reading, being a poorly made and boring film is not so far from what you would expect.
The only worthwhile thing in the entire picture is Kate Winslet. Worth $2-
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Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
Kate is in my top 5 actors list - I have to see this because without watching, and while I love your thoughts and analsyis, I have to disagree. LOL. She can't be in a film this bad. NNNNooooooooooooooo.
Awesome writing Dave BTW!
Comment by Linh
Celluloid Fun
I quite enjoyed it and hope Kate Winslet wins the Oscar for her role in The Reader.
I look forward to reading what Jason thinks of this film.
Cheers!
Comment by Michelle Sweeney
Competition Queen
Comment by Morgan Bell
Deep Pencil
Business News
Movie Train
Comment by Janet Collins
Acceptable Etiquette
The Social Critic
Janet Collins Blog
I saw this one the other day and loved it. The conflicts in the character of Winslet's, Hanna, I thought were very deliberate and her acting was so good that I sypathised with her throughout the entire movie.
We must have very different tastes in movies, Dave! I know this wasn't everyone's type of movie but it was still a good one in my eyes.
Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
Comment by Janet Collins
Acceptable Etiquette
The Social Critic
Janet Collins Blog
For anyone who likes good, interesting stories, this is a good one. I saw it spontaneously the other day with a friend and was really glad I did.