It’s a strong glow…in an otherwise frigid world in the 1950s…a sepia gloom that’s there throughout. Young Michael Berg gets a bout of scarlet fever, and a mature Hannah Schmitz cleans his bile on their first encounter. An affair follows…nurtured under the warm glow of a German sun. Michael learns the intricacies of human bodily want and passion. During the duo’s love-making periods that last only for one summer, Michael reads to Hannah…Homer, Chekhov, and a host of others. Hannah looks forward to these reading sessions…and Michael, within the scope of his boyish fantasies, to the love-making…and the two form a special bond.
When the movie started, I thought, not again! Don’t give me another of those orgies of Winslet. But I was wrong…as for the sex; the movie couldn’t have been half as meaningful without it.
But I’m not here to talk about the sex and the intellectual elegance of the film. Nor am I going to praise Bernhard Schlink’s narrative technique, Stephen Daldry’s direction, Winslet’s gusto, or David Kross’s boyish charm. I just felt I needed to write about the pathos of the film…the sad light through Winslet’s windows, the rust in the bathroom pipes, the buff patches on the wall…maybe I should tip my hat to the amazing photography by Roger Deakins and Chris Menges.
All of us would have been part of this imagery, captured brilliantly by these guys, at some point in our lives. Try and imagine a warm June afternoon in Calcutta…preferably the north of the city, buildings with peeling walls, brick lanes, and pigeons creating a ruckus on the terrace…evenings come, with the hope of a thunderstorm…but nothing happens…the sepia glow of the sun turns to a soft orange haze. However much you take a bath, the sweat returns…the talcum powder on the skin feels soft and damp...no scarlet fever…but dismal nevertheless. There is no post war crisis here, but the oldness of the city debars hope from entering the crevices of the brick walls...the crevices of the mind. The only escape seems to be through literature…through a Upamanyu Chatterjee, through a Maya Angelou, through an Amit Chaudhuri, through a Bill Bryson…if not a Homer or a Chekhov. Be it 1950s or the current times…the oppressive reality remains. Escapades of the mind are what carry the promise of luminescence...
When the movie started, I thought, not again! Don’t give me another of those orgies of Winslet. But I was wrong…as for the sex; the movie couldn’t have been half as meaningful without it.
But I’m not here to talk about the sex and the intellectual elegance of the film. Nor am I going to praise Bernhard Schlink’s narrative technique, Stephen Daldry’s direction, Winslet’s gusto, or David Kross’s boyish charm. I just felt I needed to write about the pathos of the film…the sad light through Winslet’s windows, the rust in the bathroom pipes, the buff patches on the wall…maybe I should tip my hat to the amazing photography by Roger Deakins and Chris Menges.
All of us would have been part of this imagery, captured brilliantly by these guys, at some point in our lives. Try and imagine a warm June afternoon in Calcutta…preferably the north of the city, buildings with peeling walls, brick lanes, and pigeons creating a ruckus on the terrace…evenings come, with the hope of a thunderstorm…but nothing happens…the sepia glow of the sun turns to a soft orange haze. However much you take a bath, the sweat returns…the talcum powder on the skin feels soft and damp...no scarlet fever…but dismal nevertheless. There is no post war crisis here, but the oldness of the city debars hope from entering the crevices of the brick walls...the crevices of the mind. The only escape seems to be through literature…through a Upamanyu Chatterjee, through a Maya Angelou, through an Amit Chaudhuri, through a Bill Bryson…if not a Homer or a Chekhov. Be it 1950s or the current times…the oppressive reality remains. Escapades of the mind are what carry the promise of luminescence...
