The ideological connotation that "Life and Death Reading" wants to express is too complicated, and at the same time, it is very profound. It directly examines the simple deception and exploitation of human nature in the primitive state by the so-called civilized norms in human society.
The film is divided into two parts. The first 50 minutes describe Hannah and Mike's encounter, love, and direct spiritual and physical exchanges. Along with those naked sex scenes and Kate Winslet's huge mature nipples, the camera slowly unfolded in front of the audience. Mike's thin juvenile body and the innocent eyes when reading the book make people feel that this is a graceful and unique erotic movie. Such a story can easily be regarded as a kind of abnormal love, and Hannah's behavior is understandable. Can be identified as molesting juveniles, even if it is defined as seduction, it does not seem excessive. But the second half of the film suddenly took a twist, and this love story involved something higher than the theme of love. Hannah, whom the boy stumbles upon, appears on the bench of World War II war criminals after years of vanishing, along with several other women accused of taking part in the massacre of Jews. Although we don't see the massacre in the film, the accusation is more penetrating than the sword, which was chosen to pierce the most ordinary women of the war years, like Hannah women. They are weak, unreliable, and even illiterate, yet they have done horrific crimes one after another in ignorance. Compared with the victim, whose experience is more tragic? Hannah had to spend her life reflecting on the crimes she had committed, and such a request seemed so contradictory to an illiterate.
The denunciations and reflections on the subject of the massacre are the interlude of the love affair between Mike and Hannah, the boy falls in love with Hannah, his lover commits the most shocking crime, and also faces joint charges in court with other accomplices , the boy was able to prove that the accusation was false, but Hannah herself pleaded guilty. Hannah doesn't want people to know she's illiterate, like Mike said, she's shy. Hannah doesn't want others to know that she is illiterate, she wants to be treated like a normal person.
What kind of person is Hannah? There is no doubt that she is illiterate, she is an ordinary woman without a good education, her love and thoughts are pure, pure to primitive, pure and scary. You could say she was seducing young Mike to offer her sex in exchange for reading a book to her. You can say that she obeyed the Nazis' instructions and orders inhumanely and inhumanly watched the more than 300 Jews burn alive under her own eyes without extending a helping hand. But she is a person who has not been evaded, a piece of blank paper. She knows that she has no knowledge and no culture, so she will be ignorant in this world. She is unable to retaliate when others accuse her and dispose of her stolen goods. Just say straight to the judge: "If it were you, what would you do?"
As an illiterate Hannah, she couldn't realize what the work she was doing meant, let alone the meaning of the concentration camps; the essence of Nazism was in Hitler There are a few people under the rule who recognize it clearly, a few who boldly say 'no', and a few who boldly expose the crimes of the Nazis. Hannah, like millions of ordinary Germans, is accepted and implemented by the German government's policy of ignorance. . And when the Nazi crimes were reckoned after the war, she became the defendant; while the other literate defendants relied on an illiterate woman for their crimes of the year. frame.
However, it is precisely because Hannah is gradually influenced by culture, in the 'love communication' with Mike, the book that Mike read to her, she was moved by the words, stories and things in the book... She no longer thinks that She had been an accomplice of fascism out of ignorance, her conscience was enlightened, so she did not expose the "signed" document as false evidence - at that time she could not write at all. She accepted the punishment, and she already knew in her heart that she was guilty, even if it only happened when she was still ignorant... Execute the sin! In reality, it seems understandable to be loyal to your duties, to obey orders, and to obey strictly; but if such a life creed conflicts with the basic values of human beings (universal values), especially when it threatens the freedom and life of others, you are still just a machine. part of the crime against humanity. Whether "intellectually illiterate" or "ideologically illiterate", they should go to the dock—sometimes their own conscience court.
"Life and Death Reading", the original author of Benhard. Schlink's answer to whether civilization and primitiveness is good or evil is literary and abstract; but I guess that's just one aspect of the problem - it wasn't just the uneducated and illiterate ordinary people who were brainwashed in WWII People, we Chinese Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution also have a basic moral foundation. And Japan, when it pushed forward the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" under the fire, was more united from top to bottom and has no regrets to this day.
The acquisition of knowledge can indeed help people realize the evil of history, so when Anna finally saw Mike, she said, "I learned to read"; but ignorance is not necessarily the origin of evil, on the contrary, it is precisely the evil of civilized people that brings people deeper The use of the ignorant by the civilized is the greatest crime. As Chairman Mao said: "The more knowledge, the more reactionary". Yes, on the other hand, the less knowledge, the more it can be used, what an ironic sentence.
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