Adapted from the novel of the same name, The Reader spans forty years of the Holocaust’s aftermath as experienced by two people whose paths briefly intersect before diverging in wildly different directions. Michael is a teenager growing up in postwar Germany who, purely through happenstance, meets and falls in love with an older woman, Hannah. They enter into an intense physical relationship, but Hannah is a deeply guarded woman who carefully maintains a certain distance from the enthusiastically lovestruck Michael. But the two develop a routine in the course of their affair: Michael reads to Hannah from assorted literary works before they make love. Hannah eventually drops out of Michael’s life only to resurface several years later when he is a law student and he discovers that she is on trial for war crimes she allegedly committed as a guard at a concentration camp.
The film masterfully explores the consequences of that short relationship on both their lives, even long afterwards. To say much more would spoil the story, but it does avoid predictability and cliche. These characters are both deeply wounded and there will be no Hollywood ending, which is as it should be. Kate Winslet delivers a fine performance and it’s good to see Bruno Ganz–the star of Wings of Desire–make an appearance here.
Your positive critic makes me feel like seeing that film, and reading that book.
The whole point of the movie is that Hannah actually feel strongly for the boy, but she is a kind of sociopath who cannot feel, empathize, or moralize in a normal way. She doesn’t understand the meaning of the value of the 300 jews in the burning church, or the jewish women she sent off to their deaths to “make room” for the new ones.