I HATE german films.... and I hate German men who are cowardly

The end credits are just rolling up, and I am.... pissed off.

It is 'Der Vorleser'. It is about someone who reads to someone because she can't read or write.

So ok, this fifteen year old kid falls in love with an older woman. In the Fifties in Germany, which was even more stifling than in the US, and NO ONE at that time would ever admit having been a part of anything political in the decade before.

That was subtly, but nicely done.

And the production values were top-notch without coming to the fore, which was what USED to be the thing behind the quality, and not the thing itself. So far so good.

So... it is this mysterious woman who seduces a young kid, and has sex with him, but only after he reads to her. Because she can't. Lovely, lyric, gritty, and so on.

(No, it really was pretty... and yes, full nudity, which doesn't frighten the horses here... it propelled the story and wasn't gratuitous.)

Whatever, one day the woman disappears, the young man goes into law school later...

And HERE is where my boxer shorts started getting in a twist. Her former lover... who never got over her...is in law school. Attending a seminar, a very exclusive one. And gets to see his former lover accused of being a witch in the concentration camps.

Except she probably wasn't and gets made the scapegoat of the guards at Auschwitz.

And I started becoming really, really angry.

Because the young guy turned into 'tormented' Ralph Fiennes, looking back, and his younger self is at the trial, and knows that the woman charged couldn't ever have done what her co-accused said she did, because... she couldn't read or write.

And the younger version doesn't make one peep in protest, so she goes to jail for twenty years.

No THAT is typical German male behaviour. Cowardly. So skeered that they won't advance on the food chain.

By then my boxers looked like a thong.

Whatever, the guy's life is totally fucked, he never gets over it, and after this woman gets out of prison after 20 years, he is the only one who can take resposibility for her because he sent her tapes, reading books to her, but was too cowardly to see her personally.

And the day that is supposed to happen, she hangs herself.

It was not a satisfying experience, in other words.

Now, I know... the theme is very touchy, especially here.

But this was so fucked up, I didn't know where the fuck I was supposed to be thinking.

Who is 'to blame'? Who just gets caught up in things? Where does the guilt lie?

Important questions.

I have known someone who really did such a number on his wife that I will never ever forgive him.

Germans can really be cowards, believe me....

obviously, the film riled me up. It is a good film, and Kate Blanchett was wonderful, and deserved that Oscar nomination.

But on the whole?

Well, it is a good film for a rainy day if you want to get depressed.