paradox

Stephon 2022-04-20 09:01:27

In fact, if this movie is put into reality, it is a question about the Nuremberg trials. Those extraordinary people who have done extraordinary things in extraordinary times, should they suffer the consequences of crime and punishment? Obviously, reality and movies give us the same answer, many of the staff during the Nazi era were punished and the heroine of "The Reader" died.

Why is it a hybrid?

One is because of the history and the stories the movie describes. Those under coercion or under certain historical circumstances may be doing things they shouldn't or don't want to do in their hearts. External reasons and internal contradictions drive their mentality and behavior to have a certain distortion, so hybrids appear. This will happen in any country, not only during wars, but also after wars. Distortions and hybrids are more likely to appear. Germany, Japan, and China, these three countries that have been injured by World War II are even more prolific in hybrids. Look at the left and right wings of Germany. Conflict, the perversion of Japan, and the complete loss of China's relationship with Japan and its values, it's not hard to understand how hybrids arose.

The current hot-read commentary "Unhappy China" is actually the product of this hybrid. Although I have not read this book, I have seen the comments and the author's comments in the newspapers, and I know a thing or two. The weak coexist with the desire and jealousy of the strong, the helplessness and hatred of the good for the evil are intertwined, and the intersection of all opposites is a place rich in hybrids.

Another point of view from the way of the film’s narrative, an interlude film, the reality and the memory complement each other, the Centrino car and the heavy pace are obviously not in the same tone, although the director can express a gloomy atmosphere, the modern environment is mostly happening. On a snowy day, the glass buildings of modern buildings and the mirrors of cars are so bright even when it snows. This is the United States with a highly developed industry. Dark apartment buildings, cramped elevators, suffocating prison cells, this is 60s Germany. Following the reader's gasp and the heroine's uneasy footsteps wrapped in a tight coat, we can all feel the depressed atmosphere, but with the cadence of the reader's voice, we find that it is so incongruous.

We are all bastards of the times, doomed to swing between spiritual and material, doomed to be lost in self and society.

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Extended Reading
  • Sidney 2022-03-21 09:01:33

    Been wondering what was the most shameful part about Hannah? In fact, it is not her identity as a Nazi concentration camp administrator, but that she is illiterate. This is shame within shame, and it dominates her life consciousness more fundamentally than sin recognized by the world. For a long time, I didn't understand why Hannah was reluctant to get out of prison and reconcile with the real world. She has learned so many words during her sentence and learned to write. She can start her life again. But maybe it's because knowledge can open people's conscience, she feels that she has no face, and the world (actually the representative of this world, the little boy who has been with her for a long time) is unwilling to accept her. In the face of true love, the proportion of shame and conscience is very large, so large that a person can voluntarily end his life because of shame.

  • Hilda 2022-03-23 09:01:33

    The movie must have hired an American legal adviser. I feel that the legal part of the trial is quite accurate, and it makes people feel how unfair the original legal system is to the poor who have no access to legal terms/resources. The trial part is the best and most prudent in the whole film, while other parts are too procrastinated and superficial, and I feel that many of the inner emotions expressed in the book have been ignored. The line "Camp is not a university" is wonderful.

The Reader quotes

  • Hanna Schmitz: It doesn't matter what I feel. It doesn't matter what I think. The dead are still dead.

  • Young Ilana Mather: [Testifying in court] Each of the guards would choose a certain number of women. Hanna Schmitz chose differently.

    Judge: In what way differently?

    Young Ilana Mather: She had favourites. Girls, mostly young. We all remarked on it, she gave them food and places to sleep. In the evening, she asked them to join her. We all thought - well, you can imagine what we thought. Then we found out - she was making these women read aloud to her. They were reading to her. At first we thought this guard... this guard is more sensitive... she's more human... she's kinder. Often she chose the weak, the sick, she picked them out, she seemed to be protecting them almost. But then she dispatched them. Is that kinder?