Interview: David Hare, Screenwriter of “The Reader”

“I personally am sick to death of manipulative movies where I’m bullied emotionally into feeling this or feeling that. People tell me that on this film they started crying in the first five minutes and they cried throughout the whole movie. There are people who’ve said to me it was strangely cold and they were never moved by it at all. “

by Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

Stephen Daldry’s The Reader has been the subject of some controversy over the last month or so, with the much publicized verbal war between its two surviving producers, Harvey Weinstein and Scott Rudin, the latter of whom has taken his name off the film as a result. Of course, this squabbling did nothing to respect the memories of the film’s other two producers, the late greats Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella. Now that that pettiness is put to rest, however, we can now focus on the actual film, which is an engrossing and distressing story of post-war Germany about a teenage boy’s (David Kross) intense, tumultuous and brief relationship with an older woman (Kate Winslet), the dark past she’s hiding from him and the effect the revelation has on him throughout his life into adulthood (Ralph Fiennes). David Hare wrote the screenplay, which was adapted from the popular German book Der Vorleser from author Bernhard Schlink, who has been cagey about just how autobiographical the film truly is. The other day, I sat down with Hare, who spoke initially in a weakened rasp from how much talking he’s been doing for this film (and possibly the bug currently going around Los Angeles and everywhere else) and we talked about the film, the German history that informs it and his annoyance with mainstream movies. I’ll warn you that there are some spoilers involved later on, but it is difficult to imagine anything being able to really spoil a film this good.

*****

Are you tired of talking about the film?

David Hare: No, I’m really enjoying it, because people’s responses to the movie are so interesting and diverse. I’m asked a whole variety of questions. I’ve rarely enjoyed doing press so much. We did it in New York last week and everyone has something to say. So it’s great.

It sounds like that’s an integral part of the screenplay and the book. At least the process of having everyone want to come away with their own interpretations.

DH: Make up their own minds. That’s exactly it. We tried to make the film without weighting it. I personally am sick to death of manipulative movies where I go ‘oh here comes the bit where they tell us this.’ Or ‘here comes the bit when they say that.’ I’m bullied emotionally into feeling this or feeling that. People tell me that on this film they started crying in the first five minutes and they cried throughout the whole movie. There are people who’ve said to me it was strangely cold and they were never moved by it at all. And so for me, I don’t mind which they are. The important thing is not to be bullied or manipulated.

How involved were you with the direction of the film after you completed the screenplay? Lena Olin mentioned that her scene was being re-written on the day of the shoot. Were you involved in that as well?

DH: I’d certainly hope so. I would not want it to be re-written by anyone but me. I was there. Yes, I do not understand this idea that actors can write. I know it’s commonly felt in Hollywood that actors are in some way licensed to write their own material. But they are no more licensed to write their own material than I am to act their scenes for them. How would they like it if I nudged in and said do you mind if I play this scene? No, thank you.

*****
“I do not understand this idea that actors can write. I know it’s commonly felt in Hollywood that actors are in some way licensed to write their own material. But they are no more licensed to write their own material than I am to act their scenes for them. “
*****

So, no improvisation for you?

I don’t mind watching improvisation during rehearsal, that can be fantastically useful. And Stephen, like a theatre director, does a lot of rehearsal. But no, a film has to be written by one person. Writing is a craft, like directing, it is a craft. You don’t direct by committee you don’t write by committee. So no. I mean Lena’s scene is a very interesting example. You’re working with great actors. So the minute I see it there are certain reactions, which is to say ‘oh my god, you don’t need that.’ ‘Oh I need to explain this. And look, she’s so brilliant you can cut the next line, it’s not needed. Let’s get rid of that.’ And Lena is saying ‘I feel like I need that.’ Ralph is saying ‘do I have to spell this out?’ And no, it’s like theatre. But it can only be done if the writer is present. If the writer is not present you end up with a lot of the narcissistic films that you see where the actor is fitting themselves up with dialog which they think makes them attractive. It’s just why so many films are so uninteresting.

Since the film is designed to be wide open for interpretation, what do you take from it?

Well, it’s a fable. So like all fables it’s both very simple and fantastically complicated. What I take away from it was that Bernhard is talking in his book about what it’s like to live in the shadow of a great crime. How does the next generation live in the shadow of a great ethnic crime? How do they manage to construct a life? You know a lot of post-war Germans chose to lie. They chose not to admit what had happened. They chose to remain silent about what had happened. They chose to tell their children lies, which is why a lot of their children became violently disturbed and had that immense social disruption that you had in Germany in the seventies. The Baader-Meinhof Gang, all that coming out of a sense that civilized life was a sham and could not be continued because underneath the surface of this supposed civilized life of the new Germany lay all the lies of what had gone on. So what I take from the film is real tragedy in the sense that the film is about people, particularly Michael Berg, who can not do anything about what has happened in the past.

*****
“These nut cases on the internet who are saying that this movie is about pedophilia and that it’s a film about the abuse of a young man by an older woman… yeah, but the film is also saying look at the damage. The film could hardly be more moral.”
*****

Ann Roth, the costume designer, when she first read the book, said a wonderful thing to me, which is that this is a terrible story because it’s about somebody to whom the most significant thing in their life happens when they are fifteen. And they can never escape the fact of having been, at one level, deceived by a woman and yet, at the same time, having had something which they believed to be emotionally important with that woman. That’s tragedy. Tragedy is something that can’t be dealt with by psychotherapy, that can’t be dealt with by sociology, and can’t be dealt with by self-help books, which is why to me, these nut cases on the internet who are saying that this movie is about pedophilia and that it’s a film about the abuse of a young man by an older woman… yeah, but the film is also saying look at the damage. The film could hardly be more moral about saying by doing this to this young man at the age of fifteen, she irresponsibly wrecks this young man’s life. What could more moral than that? I’m mystified by people who are pretending in a sort of fake, puritan way to say ‘oh it’s wrong to show a fifteen year old boy making love to a thirty-five year old woman’ because plainly the film is almost overly moralistic about that and what happens to him because of that.

I don’t think it’s overly moralistic at all. I’ll share my impression, if you’d like. What stuck with me most as I’ve been going over it in my head is that formative relationship when you are that young and how amazing and magical everything seems to you when you’re that young. That’s just carried with you as long as you go on, you are always comparing everything to that first thing. Even when he discovers the truth of her he still can’t get past that magical thing. It just does not go away, as far as you get from it, until you have some moment of realization. and even when he has that moment it still doesn’t entirely happen for him.

DH: And where do you think that moment comes? Because I’m interested. Because I know where I think it comes.

You think it first comes with that big slow head lift when he’s sitting in on the trial and realizes who’s on trial. But it really doesn’t come until the end. He’s torn up the entire time until he has that final talk with her.

DH: That’s it. That’s exactly it. In the canteen. It’s such an unusual scene for a love story. Unlike most love stories, he’s getting further and further away from her. In other words, he’s holding on to the romance of her until he walks in and sees her as an old woman, and specifically sees that she has still not understood what she did. That she still does not repent what she did. And he asks that question ‘have you thought a lot about the past.’ And she says ‘you mean with you?’ And he says ‘no, I don’t mean with me. I mean what you did.’ And she hasn’t, not really.

And that was her moment as well. She realizes that there’s nothing left.

DH: Exactly. I kept saying to Stephen, just give me examples of a repentant Nazi. There aren’t many examples of repentant Nazis. There are Nazis who have told themselves stories of why they had done what they did. But the number of people who actually went through the process of what we call truth and reconciliation, no. Post-war Germany was rank with a kind of evasion, which I hope the film shows.

*****
“The minute a Nazi says ’schweinhundt’ or ‘mein gott’ or anything like that, you’re into silly land.”
*****

There’s one thing that sticks in my head - not as much with this film, but more with these trailers I keep seeing for Valkyrie. Is there any cognitive dissonance about writing English dialog for very German characters at all?

DH: Yeah, we did a lot of work which was mostly done by a very good dialect coach called William Conacher, who was in charge of the problem that three of the actors were English and the rest of the company was German. And David Kross, who plays young Michael so brilliantly, actually didn’t speak English at all. He had to learn English to play the part. I was trying to write at a level of dialog - nobody swears, for instance, is the simplest way of putting it. You never have an enforcer word. The minute you have an enforcer word you don’t believe it. The minute a Nazi says ’schweinhundt’ or ‘mein gott’ or anything like that, you’re into silly land. So what I was trying to do was create a kind of language that was consistent for people who’s linguistic background was different. And then the accent was provided by Conacher and I think he does it brilliantly.

A slight shift in subject. I have a writer friend who described the first time he saw one of his scripts being performed as being orgasmic in a way. Did you have any feeling like that as a script writer? Is that what you’ve felt?

DH: I think the great actors do. I think it’s glamorous. You know mostly, I work in the theatre, not in the cinema. I don’t think the cinema is glamorous. What you have to go through in the process of cinema nowadays, the complicated process where by a film is made is anything but glamorous. But it’s incredibly glamorous to watch Lena Olin and Ralph Fiennes do a rehearsal or to watch Kate Winslet and see how she constructs her performance and to be there and see the way she works. I find that absolutely riveting. And there’s the pleasure of also not being the person in charge. I’ve directed a lot. In Steven Daldry I have a director who I one hundred percent trust. I know what he’s doing because I’ve done the job myself. He’s doing it so much better and in many ways more interestingly than I can do it. So for him to be responsible and for me to just sit there and watch him do it. I love it. Also Bruno Ganz is an old friend of mine, I directed him in the 1980s. Those great German actors all come from the theatre. They’re all extremely well known in Germany. And you know you’ve got some of the greatest actors in Germany blowing onto the set and just being perfect, first take. I love that. I do love it. I love watching good acting and it’s such a pleasure.

Is there a film that you’ve made in the past, weather writing or directing that you wish had a larger audience? That you think more people should see.

Well… you wouldn’t have even heard of this film. Well, it’s very frustrating when films don’t get seen. So I made one film, Paris by Night, which was never seen in America because the distributers defaulted on it. And it was seen a lot in Europe and was a great success in Europe. With Charlotte Rampling and Michael Gambon it was made in the 1980’s and it was never released in the states because we had a catastrophic test screening in Seattle. I’ve never been able to return to the city of Seattle. It was much the worst night of my life, because the audience laughed it off the screen. They just didn’t accept it at any level. I think it’s a pretty good film. Oh my god, I would have loved for it to have been seen here.