A Change of Heart

I've had the opportunity this weekend to see four movies: Frost/Nixon, Slumdog Millionaire (for a second time), Rachel Getting Married, and The Reader. If I had seen the last two before year's end, I would have chosen either Anne Hathaway or Kate Winslet for my favorite female performance of 2008. (Or I might have declared a tie.)

Hathaway is mind-bending in Rachel Getting Married. She plays Kym, who's out of rehab for the weekend to attend her sister's wedding. Kym is one of those people who just never seems to have a handle on life, one of those folks who always seems to get it wrong. The toast she gives at the rehearsal dinner is a perfect example. It's completely self-serving and egocentric and a real downer at an event that should be filled with joy. If you think Hathaway is only capable of doing frothy comedies like those Princess Diaries movies, you are in for a shock when you see this film. She's so completely fragile, and she captures perfectly the tenuous nature of people who are in rehab. It's an astonishing feat of acting.

Rachel Getting Married was Sunday's choice of movie. Today I saw The Reader, and I was totally blown away by Winslet's performance as Hanna, a German woman who has an affair with a 15-year-old boy before leaving to join the SS as a guard at a concentration camp. The boy, played brilliantly by David Kross, grows up to attend law school and is chosen to be in a seminar that includes visits to the war crimes trial of Hanna and five other guards. It's an emotionally wrenching film at times, but Winslet manages to keep you from completely dismissing Hanna as an evil person. Just when you're ready to condemn Hanna for her actions, Winslet allows you to see a flash of her humanity and you take back (at least temporarily) your harsh feelings about her. It's a remarkable feat, made no less impressive by the film's lack of desire to paint her in easy-to-decipher tones.

Both films have supporting casts that are just astonishingly good. Rachel Getting Married has Rosemarie DeWitt as Rachel, and she's just heartbreaking. The parents are played by Bill Irwin and Debra Winger (who has a scene with Hathaway that is not to be missed). Also along for solid support are Anna Deveare Smith and Anisa George, who reveals a level of bitterness to her character that you just know has been simmering for decades. The Reader has Ralph Fiennes as the boy, all grown up now and revisiting his past yet again, and Lena Olin as a concentration camp survivor and the great Bruno Ganz as the law professor. And I'd like to mention again just how stunned I was at how talented David Kross is.

Still, it's Hathaway and Winslet who are the focus of their respective films. Both will likely be nominated for Oscars this week, and the two of them would make for a difficult choice. Winslet is overdue at this point, but I'm not happy that her performance in The Reader is being touted as a supporting performance. She's the lead here, make no mistake. And Hathaway has, I think, just re-invented her career, Bride Wars be damned. Next weekend I'm hoping to see Revolutionary Road, and I have a feeling that's just going to make the choice even tougher. So 2008 turned out to have some great performances by women after all. I just had to catch up with them.