Stars:
*** 1/2
Rating: R for nudity,
sexuality and adult themes
Run
Time: 2
hours, 2 minutes
Stephen
Daldry constructs a tightly wound drama with drastic and historical
implications.
Fifteen
year-old German student Michael Berg (David Kross) is walking home from school
when a fever overtakes him, forcing him into a dark alley doubled over in pain.
A kind woman by the name of Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) comes to his aid and
makes sure he finds his way safely back to his family. The diagnosis: scarlet
fever and three months in bed. At the end of which Michael seeks out Hanna with
flowers and gratitude.
That
innocent gesture turns significant as the pair embark on a heated and illicit
affair. Michael is besotted – his first woman – while Hanna appears willing but
distant. The two find a lovely rhythm; languid love-making followed by hot
baths and stretches of calm as Michael reads aloud from the classics (Homer’s Odyssey,
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, etc). Hanna can’t get enough of their literary
sessions, repeatedly insisting on more.
Michael is
consumed with lust and neglects his family and his teenage friends. When Hanna
is offered a promotion in another city she disappears without a fare thee well.
Fast
forward eight years to Heidelberg Law School circa 1966. Young Michael studies
law and is afforded the opportunity to sit in on a Nazi war crime trial. The
defendant: Hanna Schmitz, one and the same, a former SS guard stationed at
Auschwitz and accused of contributing to the murders of three hundred innocent
women and children.
In Daldry’s
capable hands every event is pregnant with meaning; the implications of the
affair, the incessant lies and the weighty spectacle of classic courtroom
drama. Not to mention a dark secret that could permanently alter the trajectory
of Hanna’s future.
The
narrative flashes forward and back, with Ralph Fiennes filling in as the adult
Michael facing the consequences of his philosophical choices and how they
affected his life. Winslet is heartbreaking but Kross is a true revelation as
he ages from love struck innocent to jaded, and perhaps permanently scarred,
manhood. All packaged with a smart script, palpable tension and enough ambiguity
to keep you guessing.