Turning a Terrific Novel into a Puzzling Film

Turning a novel into a film may not work, especially if the original deals with a character’s ambivalent feelings or inchoate experiences that simply cannot be expressed either through dialogue or even cinematically. However, when the novel’s most significant—indeed, pivotal scene—can easily be realized visually and is blatantly missing from the movie, it is indeed a puzzler. Such is The Reader, based on Bernard Schlink’s deeply haunting novel.

Spanning more than 40 years, The Reader centers on Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes), a contemporary German who as a young boy (David Kross) in Post World War II Berlin, had a passionate affair with a much older German woman, Hanna (Kate Winslet) who loves to be read to. After a few months, she unceremoniously disappears from Michael’s life only to resurface ten years later when he is a law student attending the trial of female Nazi guards, one of whom is Hanna.

During the course of the trial, Michael realizes she is illiterate and probably did not fully understand what was going on around her during the Holocaust; not that he excuses her, but his feelings are complicated. While she serves her sentence in prison he sends her audio tapes of various books and to his amazement she learns to read and begins to write to him. Michael has reluctantly agreed to pick her up on the date of her release. When he arrives at the prison he is told she has hung herself.

The Reader deals with many complex themes including guilt (individual and collective) and the multi-layered nature of human experience. Michael continues to be enthralled by Hanna even as her deeds sicken him. She too is a complex character, still believing that serving the SS was a rational thing to do. At the same time, she was protective towards the weaker inmates who read to her. Though Hanna never learned to read she has always loved books.

Redemption may be problematic to dramatize. But it is thematically central to the novel and an understanding of Hanna as well as Michael’s feelings for her. Otherwise, why film it? In the book when Michael is told Hanna committed suicide he is taken to her cell to collect her belongings and that’s when he discovers what she has been up to during her years in prison. Stacked on the shelves are piles of Holocaust memoirs. It’s a stunning moment that casts Hanna—and Michael’s ongoing connection to her—in a profound new light.

In the film Michael enters the cell and sees a few books lying around, not otherwise identified. The whole point has been missed. What remain are questions, not least why Hanna has had this transfixing power over Michael. But far more serious, in the end it simply becomes a story about a troubled man who fell in love with a woman who turned out to be evil. Who cares if she learned how to read?

--  Simi Horwitz