| Overall Grade: |
A+ |
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| Story: |
A+ |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A+ |
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| Visuals: |
A+ |
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READ THIS...
by PO'D (movies profile)
Dec 27, 2008
39
of
43 people found this review helpful
What a dilemma we, the audience are faced with. To actually feel sympathy for a Nazi SS officer who murdered at least 300 Jews. Yet, somehow, in this excellently acted, directed, written film, one leaves the theater feeling just that. Sympathy and sorrow for Hanna Schmitz, a woman who worked at Auschwitz, sent countless people to their deaths, even made the decision to keep hundreds of Jews locked inside a church as it burned to the ground, killing all but one. Shocking and impossible as it may seem, this story is also a love story, between Hanna, after all of these crimes, after WWII has ended, as she meets an ill 15 year old boy in the streets (David Kross, also an Oscar caliber performance) and takes him to her apartment to help him, and in the process, they have a torrid affair that lasts the summer...this, too, is quite an erotic film because of their steamy sex scenes together...) and years later, as Michael Berg (Kross, then Ralph Fiennes, playing Michael as an adult) begins to study law and has to sit in on a pre-trial for 6 women who have committed Nazi crimes, and discovers that Hanna is one of the women...Hanna is sentenced to life in prison and Michael begins sending her cassette tapes of her favorite books and stories, from which she learns to read and write inside prison...the story is much more involved than this, and you will leave the theater wondering how such a plain and ordinary soul such as Hanna Schmitz got herself involved in the crimes she committed, all really without much remorse at all. An astonishing piece of cinema; a paradox, really. See it if you love and treasure intelligent and compelling movies. |
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