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Anne Hathaway should have won the Best Actress Oscar. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Kate Winslet and thought that she was due for an Oscar…just not for The Reader.
Hathaway’s toxic, lying, manipulative over-grown demonic wild child is a performance of true grit and determination. She blasts all memory of The Princess Bride clear out of your mind. I knew from Brokeback Mountain that she could be a good dramatic actress, I just didn’t know how good she could be. This is one of the most accurate, honest portraits of a recovering addict, but a non-recovering narcissist, I have ever seen. Rosemarry DeWitt as her long-suffering sister, the Rachel of the title, should have gotten more awards recognition for her work. For all of Hathaway’s poison, DeWitt is there to counter back with reality and to call everyone’s bluff.
Jonathon Demme is a master filmmaker. Interview With the Vampire is an icy, erotic, phantasmagoric cabaret, Silence of the Lambs is a chilling neo-noir, and Beloved is messy but filled with beautiful images. His artistry isn’t involved in creating images which look like moving paintings, of which the three films I mentioned are, but in creating a documentary feel. This feels like scrapped together home movies. That is not a complaint but high praise. This feels so real and authentic that you forget it’s a scripted drama. The best and most engrossing works of art can do that to you.
