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The Reader: Ralph Fiennes interview
Set in post WWII Germany, The Reader, focuses on the affair of 16 year-old Michael (David Kross) and a woman twice his age, Hanna (Kate Winslet). Their relationship ends abruptly, but Hanna’s dark secret comes back to haunt Michael in later life. Directed by Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours), the film has already earned its self 4 Golden Globe nominations, we talk to Ralph Fiennes about the difficult subjects the film touches upon and the loneliness of his character. LOVEFiLM: You play the character of older Michael, who’s going through an extraordinarily difficult time; I can imagine playing this man with this terrible secret was rather solitary? Ralph Fiennes: Terribly solitary. I found Michael… I haven’t played a character…. Every time we shot it, endlessly over 9 months, I always felt this weight and this heavy, alone feeling every time I went back to Berlin to do it. It was this terrible, unresolved pain this man had, and I always found it very exhausting. There are some parts that give you energy, due to the nature of the character, but this was draining. LF: Were you aware of the book and its success prior to making the film? RF: Anthony Minghella, who was a producer on the film, died as you know, but he gave me the book many years ago to read. I remember thinking ‘why am I reading this?’ as it wasn’t clear to me that the part of older Michael would be right for me. I read it and enjoyed it, but I think that anyone that reads the book remembers the love affair and the sexual initiation of the young Michael. And I didn’t remember, as Bernhard Schlink writes, the moral dilemma of Michael, which coming back to it now with Stephen [Daldry], was, in the end, the thing that makes it really interesting. LF: The topic of collective German guilt over the Holocaust is a complicated subject for a film to touch upon? RF: It’s a tricky area. I don’t think that everyone knew about the extermination policy of the Nazis. I think they knew of the anti-Semitism, and they knew that Jewish families would disappear, but there was a weird ignorance about the events. I know German people of that generation who just said, ‘we didn’t know, we didn’t believe it when we saw’. One of the biggest, most complicated questions is, ‘well how did you not know?’ Everyone knew about the anti-Semitism of the Nazis, and people were either in denial about it or unashamedly anti-Semitic.
One of the books that Stephen suggested to me - and that I really recommend - was a book by an Hungarian born women called Gitta Sereny, it’s called Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. Albert Speer was initially an architect, but Hitler put him in charge of his war industry, to help Germany fight the war efficiently, from 1943 onwards. Her whole book confronts Speer, who spent 20 odd years in prison, asking him about what he did and didn’t know. Speer was one of the most intelligent, most articulate, most gifted men, and Hitler took a shine to him, and he made a plea of ignorance at the Nuremberg trials, which a lot of people just didn’t except. When he came out, she spent a lot of time with him - clearly quite liking him as a man - but pursuing him on what he did and didn’t know. But Hitler compartmentalised, everything was on a need to know basis, and I think it’s a very complicated question as to what exactly people knew. LF: What was it like working with Stephen and tackling such a delicate subject? RF: He is such an open and generous man, I loved working with him. He gets excited by any ideas that his actors have. He has a palpable excitement about what could be achieved in a scene on any given day. And that’s wonderful to feel a director’s genuine thrill and buzz about what could be achieved in the scene. It’s the tiny things, the little things, that can make a scene, and those are the things that, cinematically, are very potent. It’s not the dialogue or the big emotional conformation but it’s actually what people don’t say, or the way people put a coat down or pick it up again, a mean, tiny, banal thing. Another person that’s very good at that is Steve Spielberg. He recognises the small bits that will give a little undertone to a scene, and Stephen Daldry loves to find out what those might be. LF: You only have one, very important, scene with Kate, what was she like to work with? RF: She’s phenomenal. I’ve always been a huge admirer of her and I was thrilled that I had one scene with her [laughs]. I think she gives an extraordinary performance, I think it was a challenge for her. But I definitely felt that both characters are reaching across a divide. What I understand from the way that Kate plays it is that Hanna is looking for a connection, a re-connection with Michael, sort of one that she wasn’t prepared to give 30 years before, and I felt that Michael is not able to make that connection, he can’t.
LF: There’s a particularly pertinent moment when she reaches out to touch your hand... RF: And that’s an exact example of a little thing that everyone talks about, and it wasn’t anything we rehearsed or even suggested. Kate put her hand on mine, and I just take it away. LF: It’s a film that gives a lot of food for thought… RF: I love a film that does that to me and if I can be part of a film that does that then I’m happy. I think the best films and plays do that to you. Helen Cowley Titles related to this articleRelated/similar articles
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