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01 April 2009 - 23:37

the reader

So. Wednesday night movies rolled around again. This time it was The Reader.

Yeah, I gave up Lost for a week to see it. Did I miss anything important?

We double-dated. The wife brought me along, and her regular Wednesday date brought a husband, too.

I'm glad I went. Certainly better than Lost. And not just because we got to see Kate Winslet naked again. And again, and again.

She deserves whatever accolades she got for this film, by the way. And not for being naked. That was just a bonus.

But the film itself? Not quite sure what to say about it.

Which, perhaps, means that I got it.

I several times caught myself remarking at how well they did the costumes and sets for post-WWII Germany.

Which means, of course, that there was something wrong with the film itself, if my mind was wandering to notice such things.

As the wife asked afterwards, yes, I'm fairly certain that really was Auschwitz we were looking at. Though I could be wrong.

But again, at that point, why was my mind wondering about that, when it should have been feeling angst, or horror, or some sort of emotion for the main character as he wandered those places?

And that was the greatest flaw of the movie.

Or perhaps it's greatest accomplishment.

A complete sense of gray, not a speck or white or black in the characters or events at all. No disgusting, obvious evil. And, unfortunately, no obvious compassion or forgiveness either.

Just a gray deadness.

As we both admitted afterwards, many moments of almost strong emotion. The tears were there, in their ducts, ready to flow.

But they never came out. The villain was never really a villain, and if she ever did something evil to our hero, I never saw it explained. And our hero? Never did anything heroic. Just that decency which he felt obligated to do, and at least twice, not even that.

It's supposed to be semi-documentary. A piece speaking to the guilt carried by the first generation of Germans to follow behind, and amid, the Nazis. And perhaps it depicted their lives, and guilt, and melancholy, perfectly accurately.

I am offspring of the Greatest generation. Those who actually fought World War II. I remember clearly, whenever mention of our family lineage came up as being German, my mother was terribly quick to jump up and correct that assumption.

We were not German, we were "Pennsylvania Dutch". Well, after Witness came out, we all knew "Pennsylvania Dutch" is actually "Pennsylvania Deutch".

I know our family tree. We're German.

Arrived here before the Lincoln Administration, so I carry no guilt whatsoever for what happened under the Third Reich. But if an entire generation of Americans will deny their heritage because of the horrors of Nazi Germany, what must it have been like for the first innocent generation of Germans, to grow up amidst the camps, the ruins?

And amidst the Nazis themselves?

Perhaps we were wrong to want to see even a spark of decency, of forgiveness in that post-war generation.

Perhaps a dingy shade of gray is all there was.

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