Readying The Reader
The Reader was a gigantic best seller throughout Germany and the rest of Europe, even before it became an Oprah Book Club pick in 1999. The semi-autobiographical novel by Bernhard Schlink is about the highly sexual relationship between Michael, a teenaged German boy, and Hanna, an older and illiterate female trolley conductor — who is later tried as a war criminal — for whom being read to was both foreplay and afterplay.
Now, this unusual and affecting work has been brought to the big screen by director Stephen Daldry — the man behind the film and stage versions of Billy Elliot — award-winning playwright and screenwriter David Hare, and a cast led by Kate Winslet as Hanna, Ralph Fiennes (who plays the older Michael), and German newcomer David Kross (as the younger Michael).
“I could use nothing of my own life for Hanna,” says Winslet, who ages almost 40 years during the course of the film and appears nude in numerous scenes. “To create her character was terribly painful because she’s so vulnerable and she doesn’t understand, God bless her. But I had to love her in order to play her, even if I don’t sympathize with her. And there were so many ways to research Hanna: reading and re-reading the book of course. But very important to me was what did it feel like to be illiterate? To understand her level of shame, I went to Literacy Partners of NYC and learned how people cope with that lie, how they navigate shops and restaurants, and even street signs.”
As for performing the nude scenes with Kross, who was only 17 when filming started, the actress explains: “We had to wait until David’s 18th birthday on July 4th, which of course David thought was ridiculous. After all, we’re talking about a young adult.” She also recalled her own first nude scene at age 17 in her first film, Heavenly Creatures, and pooh-poohed the emphasis on the whole subject. “I suppose I will have to continue to talk about the nudity, but ultimately it just helps you lose your inhibitions. The point is vanity, schmanity!”
Meanwhile, Winslet credits some of her performance — which is generating heavy Oscar buzz — to her work with Daldry, who insisted on a rehearsal process. “Stephen was just glorious during the rehearsals and on the set, especially for the courtroom scenes,” she says.
Adapting this well-known work for the screen was daunting even for Hare. “This is a grown-up movie for grown-ups. It doesn’t follow any conventional Hollywood arc. It can’t follow a conventional Hollywood arc because there’s no possibility of redemption for someone who’s done what she’s done,” he says. “The question becomes how are we meant to go on living [after discovering that our loved ones] have been complicit.”
Hare was involved in every step of the process, including on-the-spot rewrites. “Great actors show you what you need,” he says. He also helped with the editing, which was done in New York while Daldry was working on Broadway’s Billy Elliot. “Stephen and I have worked together a lot both on screen and on the stage; and while most directors say, ‘This is my vision, keep off,’ Stephen is a very collegiate fellow,” Hare notes of their working relationship.
Still, getting the film ready for its December 10 limited release was a challenge, according to Hare. “I had a play [Gethsemane] on in London at the time and I was commuting back and forth to the cutting room in New York.” Adds Daldry, who did a little commuting of his own: “Fortunately, the editing room was close to the Imperial theater, so I’d spend a few hours cutting and then run off to see the boys dancing. And sometimes I’d take the editor to see the show or I’d take the boys over to the editing room.”
Daldry is aware that some viewers and critics may take issue with the film’s copious nudity, or even believe another film on the Holocaust is unnecessary. “As part of our massive research, we talked with Annette Insdorf [the director of Undergraduate Film Studies at Columbia], who told us there were already at least 252 films on the subject. But our film is about the aftermath of the genocide. Most of the people in our trial scenes were actual judges and lawyers from the time. But, in the end, I don’t believe it’s my job to deny people the right to their feelings.”
