You’d think an artist as established as Sir David Hare might, in the course of his long career, have learned to take a bit of criticism in his stride. However, amid a rather odd flare-up between the venerable British playwright/screenwriter and Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw, Hare comes off looking decidedly thin-skinned.
The source of conflict is Bradshaw’s savage (though I think rather astute) review of the Hare-penned “The Reader.” Despite his admiration for the craftmanship on display and the performance of Kate Winslet, Bradshaw disliked the film intensely, objecting that it exploited the Holocaust to lend gravitas to “a middlebrow sentimental-erotic fantasy.” It’s a complex (and spoiler-ridden) piece that can’t easily be summarised, but Bradshaw’s closing paragraph offers the nub of his argument:
I can’t forgive this film for being so shallow and so obtuse on such a subject, and I can’t accept it as a parable for war-guilt-by-association suffered by goodish Germans of the next generation. Under the gloss of high production value, under the sheen of hardback good taste, there is something naive and glib and meretricious. It left a very strange taste in my mouth.
Bradshaw isn’t alone; you may remember that the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis had some similar qualms about the film’s take on Holocaust, accusing it of “embalm(ing) its horrors with artfully spilled tears.”