The Reader

The Reader, by the same director (Stephen Daldry) and screenwriter (David Hare) who did The Hours, is one of those lovely but strictly no-laughs literary adaptations loaded with meaningful silences, unresolved moral dilemmas, and long, haunted stares. That's not to say the movie isn't grimly enjoyable, even if its tastefully trashy first half and its morosely serious second feel somewhat disjointed.

Ralph Fiennes is Michael, a well-off but elegantly melancholy lawyer living alone in a starkly white Berlin apartment circa 1995. He regards a sleepover lover with dismissive disinterest, he has a grown but distant daughter, and we can tell from the way he gazes forlornly from his window that the past is not his friend.

His regret-tinged reminiscences make up most of the movie, beginning with losing his virginity as a teenager in 1958 Germany to a woman more than twice his age. The teen-and-early-20s Michael (David Kross) does a good job of conveying both the forbidden pleasure of having an "after-school special" on tap, as well as the awkwardness of keeping that relationship secret.

His seductress is the brusquely unsentimental Hanna (Kate Winslet), a uniformed and distinctly unglamorous tram conductor. Michael initially is caught off guard by her attentions, not only because they are unexpected, but because Hanna is so blankly businesslike about the act. In subsequent amorous encounters, Hanna makes Michael read her passages from books after sex, then switches to requiring those readings before the act. Winslet makes her character interesting, and not a little disturbing, by cruelly delineating who has the upper hand in their relationship. She doesn't even tell Michael her name until he asks what it is after bedding her three times. Even then, her first response is, "Why do you want to know?" Later, she informs him that, "you don't have the power to upset me. You don't matter enough to upset me."

The Reader's poster tagline is, "How far would you go to protect a secret," which makes reviewing it without giving away what are supposed to be unexpected plot points difficult. One of its main problems, however, is that what is supposed to be a second-act revelation is obvious to the audience much earlier. This makes it hard to believe that Michael would not be aware of this fact long before it dawns on him in law school.

As for what actually happens in the movie's second half, suffice it to say that the Holocaust is involved, as well as issues concerning both collective culpability and personal responsibility. Caught between an urge for compassion and the need to condemn, Michael comes to represent an entire generation of post-war Germans who could not comprehend what made their elders behave so monstrously during World War II.

As for Hanna, it's frustrating to see her become uncharacteristically forthright and sound far too naïve during a trial scene. Everything we have seen of her before then implied she was made of tougher stuff. Michael's corresponding coldness, however, is both sadder and more understandable. Despite a first half that's all shared baths and between-the-sheets action, The Reader ultimately becomes more of a political parable than a love story. While that dichotomy is slightly jarring, it complements the theme of a country forced to reconcile misplaced, unthinking passion with intellectual reckoning. It's not a perfect allegory, but definitely one that will inspire discussion afterward.

—James Dawson
12.09.08

Completely riveting, yet about as emotionally distant as the chilly former concentration camp guard portrayed in the film by Kate Winslet, director Stephen Daldry's Oscar-bait follow up to his 2002 award winner, The Hours, stays coolly detached despite featuring some pretty steamy sex scenes and dealing with a highly confrontational subject matter. Still, emotional impact is admittedly not the be-all and end-all of a great film, and those in search of an absorbing, intellectually stimulating study of German Holocaust guilt will certainly have something to talk about after the credits roll.

The story opens in post-World War II Germany, where young student Michael Berg (David Kross) has fallen ill with scarlet fever while walking home from school. Gently guided home by a compassionate older woman named Hanna (Winslet), Michael convalesces for a few months before returning to Hanna's apartment with a bouquet of flowers. Before long, the two have become lovers: Hanna instructing Michael in the methods of pleasing a woman, and Michael reciprocating by reading her the classical texts he's been assigned in school. Later, when the relationship grows contentious and Hanna vanishes without a trace, Michael moves on to study law, eventually attending a class field trip to a German court where a group of female former concentration camp guards are being tried for war crimes. The defendant bearing most of the brunt in the trial is Hanna. She stands accused by her fellow guards of being the leader who ordered that a group of Jewish prisoners be contained in a church that was bombed into oblivion, killing everyone unfortunate enough to be locked inside at the time. Upon realizing that the very same woman whom he slept with as a teenager was complicit in the murder of hundreds of innocent Jews, Michael discovers that Hanna has accepted the charges against her in order to prevent an embarrassing truth about herself from being revealed to the court.
The Reader begins as one type of film and ends as something else entirely -- effectively blindsiding the viewer as it takes a sharp turn from erotic tale of sexual awakening to austere meditation on cultural culpability. Fortunately for the viewer, both aspects of the film are expertly scripted and beautifully acted, ensuring our undivided attention even when we aren't entirely certain where the story is headed. Those willing to play along are rewarded with a film that is consistently watchable thanks in large part to strong leading performances. German newcomer Kross is a natural, while his seasoned co-star Winslet conveys her character's complexity with graceful candor. However, the film is strangely unaffecting due to a marked lack of focus in storytelling. Each plotline has the makings of an interesting, involving movie, though in the end (and admittedly not being familiar with the book) it feels as if the screenwriter, David Hare, couldn't decide which aspect of Bernhard Schlink's novel he liked most, and chose to simply split the story down the middle. Whether the source material or Hare's tinkering is to blame for the fact that the story keeps the viewer at arm's length, the end result is still the same: a film that's technically superb, yet still falls short of true greatness. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide