Via Steven Daldry, the same British film director who gave us The Hours, Hollywood shows Germany as it was in 1958 for the first time ever… I think the way of life and tone of existence in this humbled and defeated nation is more appealing than the equivalent in any other post war European nation or any state of America recreated by Hollywood for the same era.
We see a 15 year old boy, his family, and schoolmates in the days before the influence of Adolf Hitler had completely worn off yet, and then, a few years later, he’s in law school just after rock and roll has taken off.
While rebuilding is happening constantly in the background, this Germany is different than it was in 1932. Even though it was defeated Germany gained much more in WW2 than it lost, because – on balance – it fought very hard and selflessly, in deadly earnest for new values it felt passionate about, to then fall back on older, deeper values it cherished even more. The cruelty epitomized by the Nazis is now gone just as surely as the Jews who fled or perished.
Put it this way: this defeated Germany is still miles ahead of where it was after WW1, which ended fourty years before.
Hgggkmm Ughhmmmm Ghah! Im UmmmMMM! This is the sound of me clearing my throat like Phillip Seymour Hoffman in one of the closeout scenes at the end of Along Came Polly.
Except maybe for the South after the Civil War the USA has never grown so much, and so fast, emotionally: in any four decades. Then during Vietnam when the USA could have taken a great leap forward (if – hypothetically – JFK had not been assassinated) it blew its opportunity to shine as brightly as Germany did.
Michael in his youth (played by David Kross) is fortunate to be seduced by Hanna (Kate Winslett) that same hot chick we saw in Titanic. Now DiCaprio and her have teamed up again to star in Revolution Road. No: this isn’t a film review! I can say whatever I want about anything or any one I want to. At any time.
But anyway… in Prime we saw a different three actors playing out a version of the same thing in Manhattan PD (present day.) A very handsome Jewish youth fucking a stunningly handsome Nordic Aryan blonde divorcee, in her late thirties, played by Uma Thurman right after she’s starred in Kill Bill: twice. With Meryl Streep as his very Jewish mom: also her (UT’s) psychoanalyst…
This tells us there is progress! The thick layer or blanket of guilt that infested life right after WW2, that rock and roll started to blow off, has been lifted off exposing a very dangerous, quite disgusting, prickly situation to our unjaundiced view.
The three actors in The Reader btw include Joseph Fiennes playing Michael after he has grown up. Thus: two men and one woman where Prime was two woman and one very lucky young man.
This is how we do it here. We find meaning in patterns as well as ‘everything else’. So take a look at Tadpole, Prime. Crush. Something’s Gotta Give, Tadpole, I could never be your woman, and of course Notes on a Scandal.
This is it. We don’t take too much for the first take.
It’s not always enough to read: sometimes we have to take notes!
