Learning The Hard Way

As I'll be away all weekend, I'm posting another scene today to fill the silence.

I had a rented copy of The Reader (2008, dir:Daldry) in my possession for quite a while, but for some reason kept putting off watching it. Then on Tuesday, with the due date looming, I dived in and watched it in bed. It was getting on to midnight, so I decided to watch the first half an hour then go to sleep and return to it in the morning.

Naturally, this didn't work out.

I was absorbed by the storyline, Winslet's acting, Kross' beauty, the cinematography and most of all, my conflicted feelings. You don't get to know, to understand, the character of Hanna Schmitz, but through Michael's devotion to her, you find yourself welling up at her war-crimes trial, confused by your own small shred of sympathy for this character who, in so many other films, would have been the mark of evil.

This shot is taken from the scene in which one of Michael's fellow students angrily challenges their professor, saying that these women are guilty of a terrible crime and controversially claiming that everybody - parents, teachers, everybody - knew what the Nazis were doing. One student runs out of the classroom, while others look horrified. Michael tries to counter that their task as law students is to understand these women; his colleague insisting there is nothing to understand.

I think this scene impressed me both because I am currently a student - participating in debates like this and relishing the acquisition of knowledge and the chance to use it - and because it shows so clearly how, whilst you might have a strict moral code, while you may be taught right from wrong, when you find yourself in the middle of a moral conflict, the lines blur and you can see new shades of grey.