The Reader's David Kross Ignites the Screen
Newcomer Kross joins Winslet and Fiennes in Holocaust film.
Jan 14, 2009
With incredible actors like Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, and Lena Olin, it’s not surprising that The Reader has such an overwhelming intensity to it. But young newcomer Kross is also one of the major reasons why.
Kross was just fifteen when he got the part of the young Michael Berg, but filming didn’t begin until he was eighteen. Kross had to learn English for the role, a language he could hardly speak. Another reason filming waited was because he had to be eighteen in order to shoot the sex scenes with Kate Winslet.
Curiously, despite the film being filmed in English, Director Stephen Daldry was determined to remain as true to the novel’s German roots as possible. For this reason, almost the entire cast is German, except for Olin, Fiennes, Winslet and a few others. For congruity, everyone in the cast speaks English with a German accent similar to that of Kross.
Kross begins the film playing a 15-year-old Michael Berg that, thanks to an oncoming illness, has just met Kate Winslet’s character, Hanna Schmitz. Berg is throwing up in an entryway that happens to be in front of the building where Hanna lives. After throwing water down to clean up his vomit, and then callously wiping him clean, Michael begins to cry. Realizing that the boy is ill, Hanna helps him home.
Months pass as Michael recovers from his illness, and he decides to find Hanna and thank her for her kindness. While initially cold and suspicious of him, it is Hanna who asserts herself sexually with the boy, and a complex relationship begins between the two of them. Michael, young and in love for the first time, and eager to please, obeys all her commands. Each of their meetings involve him reading to her, and sex.
Seven years after the abrupt ending of their relationship, Michael, now a law student, is horrified when his class attends a Nazi war crimes trial, and there is Hanna. She, along with six others, were S.S. guards responsible for the deaths of 300 prisoners. Michael doesn’t know how to respond to seeing her, as he feels a mixture of love, regret, disgust, and anger. He questions how anyone, much less the first woman he loved, have done such terrible things.
Kross does a fantastic job showing the various feelings Michael is going through, as well as the obvious stunted emotional growth he is still dealing with from his relationship with Hanna. The viewers sees the extent to which he was damaged, as he keeps his heart guarded, refusing to let anyone close, even in later years, his own daughter.
The Reader is the sixth film that Kross has appears in, the second of which he’s played a lead role. Kross is also among ten European actors who have been chosen as the 2009 “Shooting Stars,” which will be presented for its twelfth year at the International Berlin Film Festival. Previous “Shooting Stars” are Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Franka Potente.
- The Reader
- Directed By: Stephen Daldry
- Screenplay Written By: David Hare
- Novel Written By: Bernhard Schlink
- Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Kate Winslet, David Kross
- Running Time: 124 Minutes
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