The Reader by Stephen Daldry

The Reader
Cinema Release Date: July 15, 2009
Film already available on DVD since: May 26, 2010
Directed by Stephen Daldry
Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, more
American feature film, German. Genre: Drama
Time: 02h03min Production Year: 2008
Distributor: SND

Stephen Daldry, an excellent director in contemporary film industry, has tumbled in the film of the "Billy Elliot", in which he gave its customers a good impression for his directing style. Followed with the superb "Hours", a more sophisticated movie, then he began his directing with "The Reader." It is a historical movie, in which he tells a very complicated plot, although it is now very far from consensual. This film inspired from a book by Bernhard Schlink, who gives him a lot of illumination.

We can say that this is a story of an exchange of guilt. Michael, on the threshold of adolescence, fell in love with Hannah, whom he met by chance, was a recipient. Hannah was an enigmatic woman and much older than him. In fact, during one of their hikes, she was taken as his mother. In return, she demands him to read books for her. And he reads, he reads everything from the Odyssey to the Lady with the Dog by Chekhov and so on. And then one day, suddenly, she disappears. The viewer knows that it disappears because the administration of trams, satisfied with his employee, he was offered a desk job ... Kate Winslet, no makeup, quickly obsolete, ugly, tells us that she is still beautiful.

                                          The Reader

A few years later, Michael is a trainee lawyer and must attend a trial with a few other students and their teacher (My God! Bruno Ganz is an old man now! Ben saying then, that we are not getting younger). That the trial of five criminals, like many other criminals at the end of the war, they are melted into the anonymity of civilian life. They are anonymous at the outputs for the Publication of a book by a survivor who is involved. Among these women: Hannah. Her companions accused him of being the leader of the group. Evidenced by a written account of his hand, reporting the death of an entire convoy of prisoners burned alive in a church bombed.

Michael will not recover. His emotional life is quickly divorced. He is so absent-minded and miserable. Crushed under the weight of this double guilt, he feels guilty for having sexual life with a monster, because Hannah is one of them. Why did you choose the SS? Because she was better paid than workers who were surviving at Siemens. Why did you let these women die in a horrible death? But because she was hired to keep the prisoners and he was out of the question of opening the church door and let them escape! Yes, a monster, one of these monsters whose ordinary order was just regularly do her job according to her "obey orders". But Michael was guilty for Hannah, because he said nothing to her and did not tell others the truth for Hannah. Hannah was a woman who could neither read nor write, which meant that she could not have written a report and could not be the leader.

                                         The Reader Kate Winslet Talks About It

She did not deserve this life, but she still kept her own secret until her death .... Young David Kross is totally credible, and Ralph Fiennes, who plays Michael as an adult, is more handsome than ever, with the clarity of his eyes infinitely sad ...

Then, over the years to redeem himself, he will read all those books he had read for Hannah. He saves them to tapes and sends them to Hannah who was in prison. She heard the words appearing with mysterious signs on the printed pages, and learns them one by one. But the books could not help him to redeem his guilty. We know this is not good for him to feel much better, given the number of intellectuals engaged in support of the Nazi madness. If Hannah had been able to read earlier, she would doubtless have made the same choice. When Michael asks him "but in prison, you have not learned anything?" she answers "I learned to read ..."

                                        With The Reader, Kate Winslet won her Oscar Gloden Global

Exchange of guilty ...

What a beautiful theme! What a good script! What an excellent film!