In fact this movie is a flash back to Michael's past experience when he was a teenager. He was 15 years old; the setting of time was around the second world war.
Michael was not feeling well when going back from school. He took a tram and couldn't stand his bad condition. After getting down from the tram, he vomited in front of Hannah's apartment. Hannah -- 30 years old back then -- was the conductor of the tram. Seeing his bad condition, Hannah helped him, brought him to her apartment and took care of him.
Several days later, Michael went to Hannah's apartment, brought her a bouquet of flowers to show gratitude. At that time, he saw Hannah getting dressed and attracted to her beauty and sex appeal. Realizing Michael's interest in her, Hannah even seduced innocent Michael. Since then on, they had discreet affair.
One interesting thing in their affair -- for me myself -- was when Hannah told Michael she was illiterate, and was very curious to know how it was like to be able to read books. Therefore, then Hannah set up a new rule: she asked Michael to read her a book before their lovemaking.
After some time, out of the blue, Hannah disappeared; leaving Michael deeply broken-hearted.
8 years later, Michael was a student of a law faculty. His professor asked him and some other students to attend Nazi trials. To his horror, Michael found that Hannah was one of defendants as she was a guard at Auschwitz; she was accused of allowing several hundred prisoners to burn to death locked inside a church. Among some defendants, Hannah was accused to be the guilty one because she was the one who signed the instruction letter. She defended herself that she just did what she was supposed to do as her job description but because she (was forced to) admit that she was the one who signed the letter, she could not avoid her punishment: life imprisonment.
Michael was in a dilemma. He knew that Hannah was illiterate, so if he helped to tell the court about it, he could save Hannah from her punishment. He didn't understand why Hannah didn't tell the court the truth that she was illiterate. However, Michael chose to stay quiet.
******
Many years later, Michael, a widow with one child, still could not erase his past memory with Hannah. He kept his feeling guilty for years; this made him unable to have a good relationship with other women. To reduce his feeling guilty, he started to record his own voice while reading books, and sent the tapes and the books he read to the prison where Hannah was imprisoned. He just dropped the tapes and the books without meeting Hannah. He was sure that Hannah would know who the sender was.
Around 2 weeks before Hannah was free, Michael came to the prison, to meet her in person. The meeting was awkward. Hannah was a bit touched by Michael's attention to him, but she knew that Michael still kept a certain distance from her. Michael was described as doubtful what he was about to do. Their past affair formed Michael's character as someone who was always uncertain in facing women. (just my opinion, though.)
In that occasion, Michael told Hannah that he had prepared a place for Hannah after she was released from the prison.
On the day when Hannah ended her life imprisonment, Michael came to pick her up; only to find out that Hannah committed suicide.
My comment:
Why did Michael become so annoyingly coward? And I was very heart-broken when finding out that Hannah committed suicide. She survived from her long life imprisonment, only to end her own life on her free day.
Awards:
Kate Winslet (Hannah Schmitz) got Oscar for her best performance in a leading role
The movie got the best motion picture of the year
No comments:
Post a Comment