Sony Picture Classics has send us over the official poster for the upcoming Roman Polanski film "Carnage", which is based on the play "God of Carnage" by Yasmina Reza. The film staring Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly hits select theaters on December 16th.
Plot Synopsis:
CARNAGE is a razor sharp, biting comedy centered on parental differences. After two boys duke it out on a playground, the parents of the "victim" invite the parents of the "bully" over to work out their issues. A polite discussion of childrearing soon escalates into verbal warfare, with all four parents revealing their true colors. None of them will escape the carnage.
"Carnage": Official Trailer
Showing posts with label kate winslet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kate winslet. Show all posts
Sony Picture Classics has send us over the official trailer for Roman Polanski's latest film "Carnage". The film boasts an all-star cast that includes Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and John C. Reilly. The film is set to be released in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles on December 16th, 2011.
For more information on this film, you can visit the film's official website at: http://www.sonyclassics.com/carnage/
You can also become a fan of the film on Facebook: www.facebook.com/carnagemovie
Plot Synopsis:
CARNAGE is a razor sharp, biting comedy centered on parental differences. After two boys duke it out on a playground, the parents of the "victim" invite the parents of the "bully" over to work out their issues. A polite discussion of childrearing soon escalates into verbal warfare, with all four parents revealing their true colors. None of them will escape the carnage
"Carnage": Official Trailer
“Once in a lifetime comes a motion picture that makes you feel like falling in love all over again. This is not that movie.”
-Tagline for “War Of The Roses”
“Revolutionary Road” is really a horror movie more than anything else. It is brutally honest in the way it depicts the terrible disintegration of a marriage, the kind that none of us ever want to get trapped in. Those out there who think that gay marriage is a threat to the sanctity of marriage should take a look at this movie, for it is a much more astute examination at what can destroy marriage in general. When the movie starts, we know that we are in for a fateful journey of two people who at first look like they belong together, and we know that they will eventually tear each other apart.
But as tough a movie “Revolutionary Road” is to watch, it is also an utterly brilliant one, and it is further proof that Sam Mendes’ Oscar win for his directorial debut of “American Beauty” was no fluke. There is not one single false note to be found in the movie, and it feels practically flawless in its making. It has great visuals, a great script, and amazing performances from the entire cast. Sam Mendes makes “Revolutionary Road” an experience into the horrors of conformity, the very thing we all try to fight against.
The movie starts with its two main characters, Frank and April (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet), as they first meet at a party and are instantly attracted to each other from first sight. The movie then moves forward to years later as April is finished up a show she is acting in, and is bowing to a very unenthusiastic response from an indifferent audience. It is clear that their relationship has gotten cold over the years, and the frustrations constantly simmering under the surface of both characters seem to be the only thing left for them to deal with. This leads to April to come up with what she sees as the perfect plan; They can sell their house and car and move to Paris where she can support Frank through secretarial work while he figures out what he really wants to do with his life. They both see it as their great chance to escape the confines of normalcy that has been eating away at their fragile little souls. However, reality threatens to take away from their dream one piece at a time.
This is Sam Mendes’ fourth film as a director, and you can see a common thread through all his movies up this one. Sam seems endlessly fascinated with lives a seemingly standstill, and with characters who hope for something incredible to happen them. They are waiting for that moment where they can change into what they always hoped to be, and to take advantage of what lays ahead of them. In “American Beauty,” it was the characters’ desire to wake up from their dead and dysfunctional lives. In “Road To Perdition,” it was the desire of Tom Hanks’ character to get his son away from the devious life he was leading as a mob enforcer, and to redeem himself in the eyes of his son for all the bad things he has done in the hope that he can find a different path in life from his father. In “Jarhead,” it was the desire of the soldiers to enter a war and fight like men, and to take down their enemies by lethal force.
This comes around full circle in “Revolutionary Road” as it deals with characters eager to escape their suffocatingly conformist suburb to live a life of sheer excitement. But they soon come to find that they are not as special as they thought they were, and the desires of Frank and April seem to work in opposition to one another. The characters are complex in their creation, and we see what fuels their individual needs, desires, fears and anxieties which serve to define them and their actions. It’s almost like Frank and April are like George and Lenny from “Of Mice And Men;” they are two people hoping to get something they can never really have, and they delude themselves into thinking that all is within their grasp and that their dreams will soon become a reality. But reality comes to rear its ugly head at them, and you know that it ain’t gonna pretty.
In a sense, “Revolutionary Road” can be seen as kind of a distant cousin to “American Beauty” in how it details the suffocating environment of suburban living, but they approach it differently. While “American Beauty” dealt with its characters with a dark sense of humor, the environment in “Revolutionary Road” is much more bleak and consuming. In fact, “American Beauty” seems like a delightful walk in the park compared to this one.
The movie takes place in Connecticut in the 1950’s, but the feel of the movie is quite contemporary which shows how frighteningly timeless story is. This is what will make the movie hard for many people to watch as they may end up seeing themselves in these two people; the longing for a more exciting existence, for an escape from the suburban way of living that has drained them almost completely of feeling, and to get another chance to do what they really want to do in life.
Along with cinematographer Roger Deakins (“No Country For Old Men”) and production designer Kristi Zea (“The Silence Of The Lambs”), Mendes perfectly the look and feel of the 1950’s to where you feel like you are right in it and not just watching the movie. Mendes also captures the routine of the life in suburbs, and manages to capture some unforgettable moments like when April takes the garbage out to the front of the driveway, and she sees everyone else has placed theirs out in front as well. In that moment, he captures April’s realization of how she and Frank have bought into the resigned way of living they thought they would somehow avoid. It’s a beautiful movie to look at, but the ugliness of its characters frazzled emotions come through to make this seem anything like a Norman Rockwell portrait.
In addition, Mendes is served very well by his frequent film composing collaborator, Thomas Newman. Newman’s score may sound like many of his others, but he captures the longings of both Frank and April as they tumble through their seemingly mundane existence, and soon end up being driven crazy by it and each other. Throughout all his work, Newman seems to work with music so subtle in how it is performed, and yet so powerful in what it ends up conveying. It’s no accident that Newman also scored Mendes’ “American Beauty” and Todd Field’s “In The Bedroom.” Like Mendes, Newman has a strong feel for life in the suburbs no matter what decade.
But in the end, “Revolutionary Road” is really a tremendous acting showcase more than anything else, and I don’t just mean from the two main actors (we’ll get to them in a minute. I don’t think that I have ever seen a Sam Mendes that has had a single weak performance in it, and this movie is certainly no exception. Among the cast you have the always wonderful Kathy Bates who plays Mrs. Helen Givings, the endlessly talkative real estate agent who sells Frank and April the home they end up living in. The smile on her bright face serves to hide the pain that we see later as we are introduced to her son who has just been released from a mental institution. You also have Dylan Baker as Frank’s co-worker, Jack Ordway, a man who endlessly waxes philosophically over the craziness of our existence. Dylan is always a pleasure to watch no matter what he does. David Harbour and Kathryn Hahn (I thought she was Ana Gasteyer for a moment) are also excellent as the next door neighbors, Shep and Milly Campbell. The excitement that April and Frank have over their plan to go to Paris both enthralls and depresses Shep and Milly, and the way they react to it suggests that April and Frank are not the only ones leading lives of quiet desperation.
But one of the truly standout performances from the supporting cast from this movie comes from Michael Shannon as Helen Giving’s mentally unhinged son, John. In an atmosphere where the truth is felt but never verbalized, John finds himself completely incapable of telling a lie. Essentially, he is a Vulcan like Mr. Spock, but with an overabundance of raw emotion. Through his thoughtlessly cruel remarks to everyone around him, he exposes the seemingly perfect couple and their marriage for the sham that it has become, and you can clearly feel his betrayal by these two people who had promised to escape the lifestyle they found so hopeless. Michael’s performance is astonishing in its uninhibited nature as he becomes the voice of reason in a world so full of lies and with people living a seemingly comfortable life within it. It’s a daring performance that does not pull any punches, and it is deserving of an Oscar nomination.
This of course brings me to the two main actors of the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Their coupling in this movie has been the movie’s endless selling point as it is their first movie together since “Titanic,” still the highest grossing movie of all time at the box office. But this movie is very different from that one. It could almost be seen as a story of what happened to Jack and Rose after the big ship sank, assuming that Jack survived the freezing waters. Both Leo and Kate have an incredible chemistry with each other on the screen, and it almost seems crazy that it took them over 10 years to do another movie together.
Leonardo DiCaprio continues to prove why he is one of the best film actors of his generation. Throughout the movie, he lets us look past the egotistical nature of Frank Wheeler which allows him to seduce a naïve young secretary (Zoe Kazan is wonderful in the role), and to see the pain and fear that threatens to steer him further in a direction he never planned to go in. The relationship he had with his father always seems to be surrounding him in ways that are never fully explained, but we can see how it enforces him in the decisions he ends up making. Frank clearly cannot stand the job he has as a salesman, but he also is equally terrified of leaving it as he feels he may let down his family in one way or another. Leo brilliantly captures the complexity of this character whose needs and desires constantly tangle with each other, and whose anger and frustration with where his life eventually boils over to the only person he can take it out on, his wife. Leo turns in a raw performance where his vulnerabilities are so vivid that you see them in yourself.
But as raw and complex as Leo’s role is in this movie, he is almost blown away by the performance given by Kate Winslet. Along with her work in “The Reader,” this has definitely been the year of Kate Winslet, and Oscar should finally shine down on her for once. You almost think that she was in a Lars Von Trier movie with the pain her character suffers throughout the movie’s 2-hour running time. Whereas Leo’s character of Frank may have been desperate, Kate’s character of April is ten times as desperate. Her desire to escape the boring life she sold herself out to is never ending, and she can never hide the pain from others as to how much she wants to leave this life even while she feels helpless in doing so.
Seriously, Kate is in my humble opinion the actress of 2008, having given brilliant and devastating performances in two singularly great movies in one year. You have to wonder where she gets the energy to do all this emotionally exhausting work, and I can’t think of a braver actress that I have seen in movies this year other than her. The work she did in this film and “The Reader” shows that she accomplish that no other actress can accomplish right now. She has more than earned her place in the ever growing pantheon of great actresses. I’m telling you, she better get the Oscar this year because she sure as hell deserves it!
“Revolutionary Road” is not the most enjoyable of movies to watch, but not all movies are meant to be, and this one is not without its purpose. We empathize with Frank and April in spite of the way they treat each other because we know that all they go through can easily happen to us before we know it. That’s why the movie gets so deeply under your skin; these people will remind you of others around, and it you will see yourself in these characters as well. I myself seem to be leaving a life where I am caught up in making a living and in pursuing the things that make me the happiest. The road is never easy, and you always wish for it to be easier. But in the end, things could be worse as we could end up like April and Frank.
Sam Mendes is one of the best directors working today, and he has created another masterpiece of suburban isolation that stands proudly alongside “American Beauty” and “In The Bedroom” among others. It also shows how the term “civil marriage” can seem like the ultimate oxymoron. It goes back to people saying that love is a four-letter word, or that it is a sentence. Frank and April’s story is a tragic one, and probably not a movie for those just engaged.
Once again, Sam Mendes is a lucky man, dammit.
**** out of ****
-Tagline for “War Of The Roses”
“Revolutionary Road” is really a horror movie more than anything else. It is brutally honest in the way it depicts the terrible disintegration of a marriage, the kind that none of us ever want to get trapped in. Those out there who think that gay marriage is a threat to the sanctity of marriage should take a look at this movie, for it is a much more astute examination at what can destroy marriage in general. When the movie starts, we know that we are in for a fateful journey of two people who at first look like they belong together, and we know that they will eventually tear each other apart.
But as tough a movie “Revolutionary Road” is to watch, it is also an utterly brilliant one, and it is further proof that Sam Mendes’ Oscar win for his directorial debut of “American Beauty” was no fluke. There is not one single false note to be found in the movie, and it feels practically flawless in its making. It has great visuals, a great script, and amazing performances from the entire cast. Sam Mendes makes “Revolutionary Road” an experience into the horrors of conformity, the very thing we all try to fight against.
The movie starts with its two main characters, Frank and April (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet), as they first meet at a party and are instantly attracted to each other from first sight. The movie then moves forward to years later as April is finished up a show she is acting in, and is bowing to a very unenthusiastic response from an indifferent audience. It is clear that their relationship has gotten cold over the years, and the frustrations constantly simmering under the surface of both characters seem to be the only thing left for them to deal with. This leads to April to come up with what she sees as the perfect plan; They can sell their house and car and move to Paris where she can support Frank through secretarial work while he figures out what he really wants to do with his life. They both see it as their great chance to escape the confines of normalcy that has been eating away at their fragile little souls. However, reality threatens to take away from their dream one piece at a time.
This is Sam Mendes’ fourth film as a director, and you can see a common thread through all his movies up this one. Sam seems endlessly fascinated with lives a seemingly standstill, and with characters who hope for something incredible to happen them. They are waiting for that moment where they can change into what they always hoped to be, and to take advantage of what lays ahead of them. In “American Beauty,” it was the characters’ desire to wake up from their dead and dysfunctional lives. In “Road To Perdition,” it was the desire of Tom Hanks’ character to get his son away from the devious life he was leading as a mob enforcer, and to redeem himself in the eyes of his son for all the bad things he has done in the hope that he can find a different path in life from his father. In “Jarhead,” it was the desire of the soldiers to enter a war and fight like men, and to take down their enemies by lethal force.
This comes around full circle in “Revolutionary Road” as it deals with characters eager to escape their suffocatingly conformist suburb to live a life of sheer excitement. But they soon come to find that they are not as special as they thought they were, and the desires of Frank and April seem to work in opposition to one another. The characters are complex in their creation, and we see what fuels their individual needs, desires, fears and anxieties which serve to define them and their actions. It’s almost like Frank and April are like George and Lenny from “Of Mice And Men;” they are two people hoping to get something they can never really have, and they delude themselves into thinking that all is within their grasp and that their dreams will soon become a reality. But reality comes to rear its ugly head at them, and you know that it ain’t gonna pretty.
In a sense, “Revolutionary Road” can be seen as kind of a distant cousin to “American Beauty” in how it details the suffocating environment of suburban living, but they approach it differently. While “American Beauty” dealt with its characters with a dark sense of humor, the environment in “Revolutionary Road” is much more bleak and consuming. In fact, “American Beauty” seems like a delightful walk in the park compared to this one.
The movie takes place in Connecticut in the 1950’s, but the feel of the movie is quite contemporary which shows how frighteningly timeless story is. This is what will make the movie hard for many people to watch as they may end up seeing themselves in these two people; the longing for a more exciting existence, for an escape from the suburban way of living that has drained them almost completely of feeling, and to get another chance to do what they really want to do in life.
Along with cinematographer Roger Deakins (“No Country For Old Men”) and production designer Kristi Zea (“The Silence Of The Lambs”), Mendes perfectly the look and feel of the 1950’s to where you feel like you are right in it and not just watching the movie. Mendes also captures the routine of the life in suburbs, and manages to capture some unforgettable moments like when April takes the garbage out to the front of the driveway, and she sees everyone else has placed theirs out in front as well. In that moment, he captures April’s realization of how she and Frank have bought into the resigned way of living they thought they would somehow avoid. It’s a beautiful movie to look at, but the ugliness of its characters frazzled emotions come through to make this seem anything like a Norman Rockwell portrait.
In addition, Mendes is served very well by his frequent film composing collaborator, Thomas Newman. Newman’s score may sound like many of his others, but he captures the longings of both Frank and April as they tumble through their seemingly mundane existence, and soon end up being driven crazy by it and each other. Throughout all his work, Newman seems to work with music so subtle in how it is performed, and yet so powerful in what it ends up conveying. It’s no accident that Newman also scored Mendes’ “American Beauty” and Todd Field’s “In The Bedroom.” Like Mendes, Newman has a strong feel for life in the suburbs no matter what decade.
But in the end, “Revolutionary Road” is really a tremendous acting showcase more than anything else, and I don’t just mean from the two main actors (we’ll get to them in a minute. I don’t think that I have ever seen a Sam Mendes that has had a single weak performance in it, and this movie is certainly no exception. Among the cast you have the always wonderful Kathy Bates who plays Mrs. Helen Givings, the endlessly talkative real estate agent who sells Frank and April the home they end up living in. The smile on her bright face serves to hide the pain that we see later as we are introduced to her son who has just been released from a mental institution. You also have Dylan Baker as Frank’s co-worker, Jack Ordway, a man who endlessly waxes philosophically over the craziness of our existence. Dylan is always a pleasure to watch no matter what he does. David Harbour and Kathryn Hahn (I thought she was Ana Gasteyer for a moment) are also excellent as the next door neighbors, Shep and Milly Campbell. The excitement that April and Frank have over their plan to go to Paris both enthralls and depresses Shep and Milly, and the way they react to it suggests that April and Frank are not the only ones leading lives of quiet desperation.
But one of the truly standout performances from the supporting cast from this movie comes from Michael Shannon as Helen Giving’s mentally unhinged son, John. In an atmosphere where the truth is felt but never verbalized, John finds himself completely incapable of telling a lie. Essentially, he is a Vulcan like Mr. Spock, but with an overabundance of raw emotion. Through his thoughtlessly cruel remarks to everyone around him, he exposes the seemingly perfect couple and their marriage for the sham that it has become, and you can clearly feel his betrayal by these two people who had promised to escape the lifestyle they found so hopeless. Michael’s performance is astonishing in its uninhibited nature as he becomes the voice of reason in a world so full of lies and with people living a seemingly comfortable life within it. It’s a daring performance that does not pull any punches, and it is deserving of an Oscar nomination.
This of course brings me to the two main actors of the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Their coupling in this movie has been the movie’s endless selling point as it is their first movie together since “Titanic,” still the highest grossing movie of all time at the box office. But this movie is very different from that one. It could almost be seen as a story of what happened to Jack and Rose after the big ship sank, assuming that Jack survived the freezing waters. Both Leo and Kate have an incredible chemistry with each other on the screen, and it almost seems crazy that it took them over 10 years to do another movie together.
Leonardo DiCaprio continues to prove why he is one of the best film actors of his generation. Throughout the movie, he lets us look past the egotistical nature of Frank Wheeler which allows him to seduce a naïve young secretary (Zoe Kazan is wonderful in the role), and to see the pain and fear that threatens to steer him further in a direction he never planned to go in. The relationship he had with his father always seems to be surrounding him in ways that are never fully explained, but we can see how it enforces him in the decisions he ends up making. Frank clearly cannot stand the job he has as a salesman, but he also is equally terrified of leaving it as he feels he may let down his family in one way or another. Leo brilliantly captures the complexity of this character whose needs and desires constantly tangle with each other, and whose anger and frustration with where his life eventually boils over to the only person he can take it out on, his wife. Leo turns in a raw performance where his vulnerabilities are so vivid that you see them in yourself.
But as raw and complex as Leo’s role is in this movie, he is almost blown away by the performance given by Kate Winslet. Along with her work in “The Reader,” this has definitely been the year of Kate Winslet, and Oscar should finally shine down on her for once. You almost think that she was in a Lars Von Trier movie with the pain her character suffers throughout the movie’s 2-hour running time. Whereas Leo’s character of Frank may have been desperate, Kate’s character of April is ten times as desperate. Her desire to escape the boring life she sold herself out to is never ending, and she can never hide the pain from others as to how much she wants to leave this life even while she feels helpless in doing so.
Seriously, Kate is in my humble opinion the actress of 2008, having given brilliant and devastating performances in two singularly great movies in one year. You have to wonder where she gets the energy to do all this emotionally exhausting work, and I can’t think of a braver actress that I have seen in movies this year other than her. The work she did in this film and “The Reader” shows that she accomplish that no other actress can accomplish right now. She has more than earned her place in the ever growing pantheon of great actresses. I’m telling you, she better get the Oscar this year because she sure as hell deserves it!
“Revolutionary Road” is not the most enjoyable of movies to watch, but not all movies are meant to be, and this one is not without its purpose. We empathize with Frank and April in spite of the way they treat each other because we know that all they go through can easily happen to us before we know it. That’s why the movie gets so deeply under your skin; these people will remind you of others around, and it you will see yourself in these characters as well. I myself seem to be leaving a life where I am caught up in making a living and in pursuing the things that make me the happiest. The road is never easy, and you always wish for it to be easier. But in the end, things could be worse as we could end up like April and Frank.
Sam Mendes is one of the best directors working today, and he has created another masterpiece of suburban isolation that stands proudly alongside “American Beauty” and “In The Bedroom” among others. It also shows how the term “civil marriage” can seem like the ultimate oxymoron. It goes back to people saying that love is a four-letter word, or that it is a sentence. Frank and April’s story is a tragic one, and probably not a movie for those just engaged.
Once again, Sam Mendes is a lucky man, dammit.
**** out of ****
This movie has been getting a lot of mixed reviews right now, and I really can’t understand why. I was expecting a good movie with great performances when I went in to see “The Reader” today, but I ended up getting a lot more than I realized. My father was with me when I saw the movie, and he confirmed that it was astonishingly faithful to the book it was based on. Indeed, the movie is an emotionally devastating journey through the beginning of an affair between a young student and an older woman and the aftermath that the affair lays on both of them. Every single performance in this movie is extraordinary, none the least of which is the one given by Kate Winslet. If she does indeed get nominated for her performance in this and/or “Revolutionary Road,” she will certainly deserve her Oscar this time around.
Kate plays Hanna Schmitz who works as a ticket taker for the local trains going in and out of the town, and she encounters young Michael Berg (David Kross plays him as a teenager) who is sick and depressed. She takes care of him and even walks him home. Michael later returns to where she lives to thank her for what she did, and from there the two fall into a secret affair which involves both love making and reading. Hanna asks Michael to read to her before they have sex, and he does so with tremendous enthusiasm to say the least. This deepens their relationship even while it remains a secret between the two of them, and it lasts for several months.
Then suddenly, Hanna vanishes from Michael’s life leaving him confused and heartbroken, and he moves on to law school. But during the course of a trial in which Michael and several law students have been invited to, he reencounters Hanna as she is one of the defendants on trial for crimes against humanity. It turns out that she was an SS guard during the Holocaust, and worked in camps such as Auschwitz where many Jews were cruelly put to death. This creates an immense conflict for Michael in that he may be able to help her, but to do so would reveal their affair and implicate him in a situation that he will never be able to escape from ever. While their affair only lasted for a summer, the effects of that relationship end up lasting a lifetime for both characters.
The movie moves back and forth in time as we see what Michael Berg goes through as a young person, and then we see him as the adult he has become and what the impact of that affair has done to his personality. As an adult, he is portrayed by Voldemort himself, Ralph Fiennes, and he shows how Michael has become closed off in many ways and is not as open with people as he should. Everything he does comes back to the affair he had with Hanna so many years ago. The moving back and forth in time could have been horrendously irritating, but director Stephen Daldry does it so seamlessly that it never ever seems like an unnecessary gimmick.
Part of the movie’s success in affecting you may depend on how much of yourself you see in the character of Michael Berg. Many of us would not like to remember ourselves as a weak person, but something deep in our subconscious would have certainly entertained the idea of having an affair with an older woman, let alone Kate Winslet. As a teenager, your hormones are jumping up and down on an ever expanding trampoline in the realm of puberty, so thinking about something other than girls will be a bit challenging. All the same, common sense might kick in somewhere and that just might stop us from being involved in that kind of relationship.
In many ways, “The Reader” is in effect an argument against that kind of a relationship as we see that this one elicits even more heartache, confusion, and of emotional scars that can last throughout a whole lifetime. They say the first love is always the hardest because of the eventual break up which can hurt like a son of a bitch. Clearly, there are not many break ups or separations that can hurt as much as the one experienced by Michael and Hanna.
2008 may be remembered as the year of Batman, the late Heath Ledger, Robert Downey Jr., and of many other things. I do hope that it is also known as the year of Kate Winslet. On top of “The Reader,” she also has “Revolutionary Road” coming up which is directed by her husband Sam Mendes. She needn’t have been nominated for an Oscar 5 times already to convince us of what a superb actress she is. She manages to do many things that I cannot see another actress doing as effectively, and she superbly handles the aging of her character without overdoing it or falling into some caricature of an elderly person that we may have some preconception of. She immerses herself into this role ever so fearlessly, and she gives us one of the most compelling and emotionally devastating performances of this past year.
She also does something which at first would seem unthinkable and horrifying; she gives a human face to the SS officers who were later prosecuted for their role in the murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. From a distance, we would simply distance ourselves from these people because of the horrible things they have done. Winslet wisely does not make us sympathize with what her character has done, but she makes us see the pain of her character throughout the trial as she is caught up in a situation that she does not entirely understand. This later leads to a revelation about Hanna which I will not reveal here as it will simply destroy the mystery of her character for the audience this movie deserves. But this secret is something that Hanna feels much more ashamed of than her role in the murder of so many Jews.
It also brings up an interesting point worth dwelling on. These officers are being prosecuted for their role in an atrocity of the worst kind, and probably rightly so. I say probably because in the end, these are just soldiers who were ordered to do their jobs by a genocidal maniac named Adolf Hitler. As history shows, the hierarchy of an evil or highly immoral regime seems to get off somewhat easier than the soldiers whom, whether we agree with their actions or not, were simply doing the job they were commanded to do. For them to simply not do their duties would have probably led to their deaths by a simple bullet in the head. Obviously, the atrocity of the Holocaust brought on a strong need for revenge in its aftermath, and prosecutors went after perhaps the only ones who could easily be prosecuted (Hitler killed himself before he could ever be captured). While I watched the movie, my dad leaned over to me and said:
“Just remember this when they prosecute those soldiers from Abu Ghraib and not Donald Rumsfeld.”
As much as this may seem (from a distance anyway) like the Kate Winslet show, there are many other performances to admire in “The Reader” other than hers. The one performance that might come across as the most underrated in the wake of the praise she deserves is the one given by David Kross as the young Michael Berg. Throughout all the scenes he has with Kate, he more than holds his own with her as he conveys the hell of an emotional turmoil that he is forever going through both as a teenager, and later as an adult. In retrospect, David really has the hardest role in the entire movie as he has to convey many things about his character without saying a word. We know why Michael is going through so many conflicting emotions, but the characters around him don’t know that. On top of that, they cannot know as that would implicate Michael in a situation that he will not ever be able to escape from. I have not heard of David Kross before, and I am interested to see how he got the role in the movie. His performance is nothing short of astonishing.
And of course, we have the always great Ralph Fiennes as the adult Michael Berg, and he conveys how the character has never fully moved on from the affair he had so many years ago. Ralph portrays him as a man who knows that he is more emotionally distant from people than he should, and he is aided by David’s performance in that we see why this is the case. Throughout his performance, he shows how the affections he has for Hanna have never stopped, and yet they still cannot be revealed for what they will show. The everlasting effects that this affair has had on David have informed the person that he has become, and Fiennes brings us to the adult Michael as he tries to reconcile those feelings to Hanna the only way he can, by reading to her.
Lena Olin also has a terrific cameo as a Holocaust survivor who testified against Hanna and many others for their role in World War II. She shows us in only a few minutes what it really means to be a survivor of such a horrific event in history, and of how one needs to move on past it in a way that may seem cold yet very understandable.
Director Stephen Daldry had previously directed the film adaptation of “The Hours” with Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Julianne Moore. With that and “The Reader,” he seems to be working with a recurring theme of women caught up in a world they want to escape from. Even if that escape lasts only a brief moment, they are caught up in a world not necessarily of their own making, and it threatens to kill their very soul completely. Daldry certainly isn’t afraid to venture into emotionally charged material, or of material that many will simply view as depressing. Both of the movies mentioned are a journey into doomed relationships and of the damage inflicted through them.
Having said all this, I’m still surprised that this movie has elicited some negative reviews. In a sense, I can see why some see this movie as going on for far too long as it covers the affair from its sensuous beginnings to its tragic end, but to see this relationship all the way to its inevitable conclusion is important as it informs us of how strong the connection was between these two even when they were not in close proximity to one another. It is a brilliantly conceived movie by Stephen Daldry which is aided by a fantastic script by David Hare. To cut the movie off at a certain point would have certainly had a negative effect on how the audience viewed their relationship. This is a relationship that needed to be seen all the way to the end, for its main character of Michael Berg still has a story he needs to get off of his chest.
Like in “Doubt,” “The Reader” does not lay any sort of judgment on its characters and invites its audience to do that themselves. There are no easy answers to be found here, and many questions may remain with you after you have seen this movie, which is precisely the point. It forces you to put yourself in the shoes of Michael Berg and to ask what you would have done if you were him. You may not like the answers you come up with, but the questions are very important nevertheless.
“The Reader” is pretty certain at this point to have a place on my list of the best movies of 2008, and not just for the brilliant performance given by Kate Winslet. At the same time, there should now be no doubt that she is one of the very best actresses working in film today.
In closing, Sam Mendes is a very lucky man, dammit.
**** out of ****
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
