The British actress, the Titanic star, 33-year-old Kate Winslet, who played in the film “Reader” the former overseer of the concentration camp, will fight for the Oscar in the “Best Female Role” with such rivals as Angelina Jolie and Maryl Strip. Winslet “Intercessially” worked out last year, starring in two films - in “Reading” by Stephen Doldri and “The Road of Changes” by Sam Mendes, and already received two “gold globes”. The observer The New Times met with Kate Winslet in New York
Morally piercing drama called the "reader"-the film adaptation of the bestseller of the German writer Bernhard Shlinka-the newspaper "Los Angeles Times". Post -war Germany. Teenager Michael Berg (German actor David Cross) suddenly gets sick, almost losing consciousness on the city street. Michael is helped by the tram conductor Hannah Schmitz (Kate Winslet), which is half his older. Between them, a stormy romance is flared up, and Hannah shows the initiative. After the proximity, she asks Michael to read aloud classic books, from Odyssey to the Lady with the Dog. Eight years later, Michael, already a student, is present at the process of Nazi criminals and recognizes his former lover in the bench of the defendants. He learns the truth about Hannah, which she carefully hid from him. An adult Michael is played by Raif Feins. “Reader” was shown in the extra -curric program of the Berlin International Film Festival.
Both roles - both the American housewife in the “Road of Changes” 1 , and the German woman, the former concentration camp of the overseer in the “reader” - are very dramatic. Where was it more difficult to work?
Difficult question. I don’t know ... I tried desperately, to the limit, to juggle time, devoting it equally to two films that are very expensive for me.
“Reader” is all someone else's: a country, morals, a character with a broken psyche. Have you made home blanks?
I enjoyed reading the script of David Heir and the book of Bernhard Shlinka, read books and watched films about the Holocaust. I tried to feel how to live illiterate, not to be able to read, like my heroes Nya. To imbue the depth of shame, which Hannah hids into the soul. She goes to the bars until the end of the days, hiding her illiteracy from the judges, which could become a mitigating circumstance. I even found such a special school for adults in New York, where they teach to read and write. In the group where I got, the youngest was 23 years old, and the oldest was 75. It was important for me to understand how these people perceive themselves in society, how they adapt to reality hostile for them, how they used to living in constant lies. And without deception, without concealing the fact of their own illiteracy in a big city, one cannot live a day. I discovered amazing things! In general, she sat with her mouth, and listened.
We did not shoot pornography!
It seemed to me that you at the same time love this overseer of the concentration camp and hate it. And regret - like a victim of circumstances.
Hannah is an incredibly complex woman, notorious. Being a SS serving in Auschwitz, she committed monstrous crimes against humanity. But I needed to love her somehow. Do not humanize it, but do real, convincing, understand? It accumulated the potential of unspent feelings that a 36-year-old lonely woman splashed out on a young boy. She had not had a loved one for a long time, perhaps never. She fell in love with Michael with all the passion. She turned out to be even more than her than her.
Frank love scenes have already caused a scandalous reaction. Rumors leaked into the press that the shooting of sexual episodes with David Cross had to be delayed until the day he was 18 years old.
Hanji divorced a kindergarten. We did not shoot pornography, but a serious movie. I was not interested in what kind of sexual experience was, this is not my business. But how to say this ... In general, he did not extinguish in these scenes, he did everything as it should. (Laughs.) But we did not stop German laws. David's birthday is July 4, and the shooting ended on July 12, and it was precisely in this last week that we shot all sexual scenes. I understood that the nervousness of the young actor may arise from the ignorance of what should happen. And I painted each upcoming scene in details to him. I said like this: you and I will be completely naked, the first half an hour we will laugh without stopping, and there will be only three in the room besides us. David is so joyful for me: "Really?!" Joyful - not because naked, but because the minimum of people will observe us ... After all, only with age does a sober attitude come to themselves, to their body. In such scenes, the main thing is to split, remove the numbness of embarrassment, otherwise everything is a drain. It seems to me that with David we got everything naturally.
The Germans gnaws wine
Often actors mobilize personal life experience to work on the role. Did he help you?
Not the case. Hannah is not me. We have nothing to do with her. I had to come up with everything myself, fantasize, and this is insanely difficult, exhaustingly complicated. In the scene of the Hannah court, it is completely defenseless before the logic of prosecutors, it is vulnerable to all positions. And only at that moment she begins to understand what she did, having come to serve in the SS. I was shocked that everything was recreated by the type of genuine ships over the executioners of Auschwitz in Frankfurt. Starting from the invitation of their participants, prosecutors and judges and ending with the color of the curtain in the meeting room. For the first time, I acutely felt what the Germans were worried about how they were gnawing guilt for terrible crimes committed by previous generations. It was unbearably difficult to be in that electrified field. (Winslet starts to cry.) Sorry, I need to smoke. (He runs out of the room, returns with a kitty and paper, turns a cigarette and smokes.) Sorry, I got excited, everything is so fresh in my memory, forgive me ... (cries, then laughs.) I can’t control myself.
The scene in court is an emotional peak of the picture.
Do you think so? Thanks a lot! It is very important to me. Because then I survived the strongest shock. She cried sobbing ... During the filming of the scene, our producer Anthony Mingella died in court. I then went to Stephen (Stephen Doldri, the director of the film. - The New Times): How will we continue without Tony? And then our other producer died, Sydney Pollak. Terrible...
Maybe change the subject?
Yes, ask what new comedy I will play? (Laughs through tears.)
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1 Director of the film Sam Mendes - Winslet's husband.
