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Ordinary Monsters
Cohen: Have you ever been asked about the ending of the movie, when clearly Hannah seems to be more mortified by her illiteracy more than her participation in a mass murder. Have people been disturbed by that?
Schlink: David Hare told me he had done his own research about illiteracy as I had done before. And he obviously had talked to several illiterate people and asked them: if you had to choose between spending more years in prison for something you did and managing to keep your illiteracy a secret, or unveiling your illiteracy and getting a couple of years less, what would you choose? And they all said, he told me, 'I would rather go to prison a couple of years more.
Cohen: Really? Do you have a back story for Hanna? Do you know why she's illiterate?
Schlink: Well, I think you would be surprised about the billions of people who are illiterate across the world…
Cohen:…But in Germany in the Thirties?
Schlink: Well, in Germany in 2008, it’s between one and two million. They are kids who at one point dropped out of school because they had to go to work, or their parents take them along because they have to go to work and they don't go back to school. And there are kids who go through school and, in the end, just don't know how to read and write. They may be able to make their signature. But illiteracy is more widespread than we're aware of.
Cohen: Yes, I'm not quibbling with that, but in your own mind, did you know why she’s illiterate? She’s clearly not dumb. She has a job, she's interested in literature. She knows what it is and she must have gone to elementary school. So did you have an explanation while you were writing this character as to why this character couldn't read?
Schlink: In my mind she was one of those kids from…there were many Germans living in Hungary, minorities who often came and helped harvest in these farm estates during all of summer and then went back and maybe had some school in winter. But sometimes they didn’t make it fully back and stayed somewhere and didn't have a very regular life. So, in my mind, she was a kid from one of those families who never really had a good school education.
Cohen: You were a celebrated author, and you have been now since the publication of The Reader, a celebrated author. But were you prepared for what it's like to be associated with a celebrated movie?
Schlink: No, one has to learn all these things.
Richard Cohen is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post.
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funkychicken
Sitting in a tub with Kate Winslet? I am beyond jealous!
Johnnorth
The tormentng thing for me about this brilliant book and, in its own way, brilliant movie, was whether a literate Hannah would have been so reflexively dutiful in keeping the church door locked, Of course many of the perpetators of the atroicites were literate, and we all know Hitler loved Wagner. Still, Hannah as an individual who learns to read seems to have developed a moral appetite. Thanks for a fascinating interview.
blueguitar00
Re: the idea that the U.S. is a happy place where people haven't had to cope with the aspects of human nature shown in The Reader---what things were like for Schlink's generation in Germany is directly analogous to the experience of white Southerners whose parents were of the pre-Civil Rights segregationist generation and who had to come terms with the racism in their recent past.
keepakeeper43
I saw this film. I , for one , did not expect the turn in the story that throws the hero into a dilemma. Steven Daldry did a fantastic job telling Schlink's story. I was spellbound. I savored the film as I left the theatre and walked all the way home, so moved. That hasn't happened to me in years.
melissamsouza
The movie is spectacular--one of the best pieces of acting, scripting and directing that I've seen in recent years. All of this politicking around the film is pathetic and misleading; I am of Jewish extraction and watched the movie with a Jewish friend; both of us have families who lost relatives in the Holocaust, but I can tell you that this film in NO way attempts to excuse or "revise" this historic tragedy; this is a very human film about the difficulties of being human; it gives us no easy answers---actually, no answers at all. Winslet deserves it more than any other in a long time. Bravo to her and bravo to the crew for such an enrapturing film.
exploora
If they had not lost the war, would have they still been thought of as war criminals? Nuking Hiroshima, was that really necessary. I know the means to the end, winning the war.
Isn't it by time we deal with conflict as human beings first and not as government workers, otherwise we are bound to have authoritarian overtones.
Thank you.
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