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<--- Spoilers below --->
I was pretty shocked when I saw The Reader. The story is told from the point of view of Michael (Ralph Fiennes as an adult). In the movie Michael comes in contact with a woman who he falls in love with. Years later, after they have parted ways, Michael finds out that she was a Nazi prison guard who was responsible for horrendous things. She would have children read to her and then select them to be sent off to their deaths because there was no more room in the camp for them. She kept a church door locked even though prisoners were burning inside, because she felt it was her duty because she couldn't have controlled them if they got out. She was a monster.
And yet, Michael seems to forgive her. He goes to great lengths to comfort her while she is in prison by recording books on tape for her. He arranges a job and living quarters for her when she is going to be freed.
The movie seemed to say to me that it was OK to forgive and forget the atrocities that the Nazis had done.
Yesterday in the paper, Jewish Scholars slammed The Reader as Holocaust revisionism. Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said, "Essentially, it takes a woman who serves in, is responsible for, is complicit in, you pick the words, in the death of 300 Jews and her big secret shame is that she's illiterate." Another scholar said it was the worst Holocaust movie of all time.
It made me feel a lot better when I read those comments. I thought I had been seeing things in the movie that weren't there.
I was pretty shocked when I saw The Reader. The story is told from the point of view of Michael (Ralph Fiennes as an adult). In the movie Michael comes in contact with a woman who he falls in love with. Years later, after they have parted ways, Michael finds out that she was a Nazi prison guard who was responsible for horrendous things. She would have children read to her and then select them to be sent off to their deaths because there was no more room in the camp for them. She kept a church door locked even though prisoners were burning inside, because she felt it was her duty because she couldn't have controlled them if they got out. She was a monster.
And yet, Michael seems to forgive her. He goes to great lengths to comfort her while she is in prison by recording books on tape for her. He arranges a job and living quarters for her when she is going to be freed.
The movie seemed to say to me that it was OK to forgive and forget the atrocities that the Nazis had done.
Yesterday in the paper, Jewish Scholars slammed The Reader as Holocaust revisionism. Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said, "Essentially, it takes a woman who serves in, is responsible for, is complicit in, you pick the words, in the death of 300 Jews and her big secret shame is that she's illiterate." Another scholar said it was the worst Holocaust movie of all time.
It made me feel a lot better when I read those comments. I thought I had been seeing things in the movie that weren't there.
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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx
"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx
