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Showing posts with label reader. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reader. Show all posts

Friday, March 4, 2011

About "The Reader"

302009-02-21T21:31:39.198+05:30


The Reader


Michael Berg (David Kross and Ralph Fiennes) is a Scheherazade of modern times. and he reads to his girl. till her death. what if the "girl" is old enough to be his mother? what if she is a secretive, cold, distant woman? and incredibly simple too. except when they are in bed together. he reads to her. she listens. she wants more. she is a reader who reads without reading. and he sends audio cassettes to her when she is in jail. when the reading stops, she stops too. by then she has started to read. not a "Notebook" kind of reading . or aN "Out of Africa" kind of story-telling. still, it a story telling. and it is a love story.

the gray areas of morality and justice. what does a soldier feel after he has killed a lot of innocent people? including children? in a war that has nothing to do with him or the dead child? the need for a war that the soldier's own country concocted out of and for nothing? will he be ever brought to trial for his cruelty and inhumanity, by his victim? or his victim's family? what do the people inhabiting a country which sent him to a war that caused the deaths and/or enslavement of millions feel? can anyone teach them the right way to feel about these things? will they be brought to trial? will the dead victims ever get justice? if and when these people are brought to a trial in court, how many would lie to escape justice? how many would feign ignorance of what was going on right before their eyes? and how many would really have been ignorant? ignorance is evil, but knowledge could be evil too, if the subjects being taught are hatred and vengeance. or the superiority of a certain race or culture.the woman was just surviving in a moment in history. without thinking, maybe. and she pays the price. but her victims, as she says, are still dead. so is her young lover, in a way. maybe she could have refused to go with the flow. (but how many would, really?)she could have chosen not to let people be killed. she did not. as she says, she had her responsibility. she was a guard. are we allright with it if a soldier said that? that he killed because he had been ordered to. are we, who keep quiet, when we send these soldiers to kill, innocent? will that include all those people who follow a religion or religions, whose leaders sanction killings of others, in the name of religion and/or for ease of colonizations?

as for the actors -- ah! Kate! mesmerizing kate. the vulnerability, the silly vanity, the ordinariness of hannah have all been captured by her. and David Kross and of course, Ralph Fiennes! the Constant Gardener! they have lived the story. left me crying.they can rest assured that they do not belong to the common herd. no wonder some are stars!nor do they have to wonder if they really are special, or worry if they are cursed (or blessed) with that thing called "mediocrity". They are special people. people whose dreams have value. forever young.