The We Don't Do Mainstream movie group went to see The Reader this past weekend. Coincidently, the T Dot Bookclub will be discussing the book at our next meeting and I had just finished reading the book. This gave me an opportunity to compare how the book and movie jive. On reading the book I thought it was a simple enough story that it would easily be adapted to the screen without many changes. Superficially this was true: the action pretty much followed that of the paper version but the relationships and motivations were tweaked just ever so slightly as to throw me off. Kate Winslet's character particularly was made more sympathetic than my interpretation of Hanna from the book.
The interesting part of the story for me was reading (or seeing) how regular Germans dealt with Nazism and the Jewish genocide and how their decisions during the war impacted their lives after the war was over. I've often wondered how I would react if a similar situation arose in Canada. I'm sure that most people feel that they would rise up and rail against the situation. In reality I think most of us would knuckle under and just do what we had to do to keep life as normal as possible for our children and families. Just like in the old saw about slowly boiling a frog, a small change here and a small change there wouldn't be enough for most people to do more than grumble about but over time it could result in situations that we would regret forever.
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