The Academy Award nominations are out, and I want to applaud and highly recommend the nomination of Kate Winslet for best actress for The Reader. Having won two Golden Globes (Best Actress for Revolutionary Road and Best Supporting Actress for The Reader), she was considered a shoo-in for a nomination; but I'm delighted that her less-publicized role in The Reader was picked -- and that it was honored as Best Actress rather than as a supporting role.
To me, it was the best acting of anyone I have seen in the past year in a truly remarkable film, created by both the director and the screen writer who made The Hours. In one scene, as a witness on trial as a Nazi war criminal, Winslet is trying to explain why she had done a certain thing as a prison guard. She is absolutely believable, and with just a few lines adds to our understanding, if not our sympathy, for why some of the German people "went along" with the atrocities, not out of ideology or evil but as simple people "doing their jobs." It raises profound questions about evil and responsibility and about morally blind adherence to authority.
I recommend it highly. For anyone who avoids the horrors of Holocaust films, there are no scenes that in themselves are disturbing to watch. It focuses on the courtroom trials after the war, not the horrors themselves. And that's just one of the stories in this film. It's also a story of sexual awakening in a young boy and, later, his conflicts over responsibility and guilt, as he watches this trial unfold.
Ralph
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