The Reader

2008 literacy PSA

Rating: 16/20

Plot: In post-WWII Germany, the titular 15-year-old reader becomes romantically involved with a much-older Rose, a Titanic survivor. She teaches him the ropes sexually, something that is bound to make Cal Hockley even angrier than he was after finding out that she was posing nude for Leonardo DiCaprio. In exchange for the sex, Michael reads to her because apparently she is some kind of word whore. While in law school, years after she abandoned Michael, he spots her in court where she is being tried for war crimes as a former guard at a Nazi concentration camp. Michael wonders if he knows a secret that Rose wants to remain a secret even though it might save her from a life prison sentence.

Or maybe Winslet's character is the titular reader. Nah, Kross/Fiennes has to be the reader because about half the screen time in this is devoted to those two actually reading. I suspect that Cory recommended this to me because I'm an English teacher and person who knows how to read instead of a guy who really really wanted another movie to be made that had something to do with the Holocaust. Or maybe he knows how much I like seeing Kate Winslet naked. Speaking of that, here's how my mind works. I started thinking about how much action Michael was getting just by reading books aloud to Kate Winslet and started thinking about other reading incentives. You know, like the Pizza Hut Book It! program or Six Flags Read to Succeed thing. Think about how teenage boys would embrace reading and start tackling Russian classics like The Lady with the Little Dog if they got a chance to sleep with Kate Winslet afterward. Read a book, see Kate Winslet naked. Read another book, she bathes you. Read another book, you get to fondle her, lightly. Read another book, a tongue can be involved. Read a fifth book, and you get penetration. Sure, they're not going for that sort of thing in the Bible Belt, but in more progressive school districts, I can see something like this revolutionizing education.

Winslet is really good and deserving of whatever awards she won for this thing although I'd argue that things might have been a little more realistic with German performers. And co-star Ralph Fiennes is just as good even though it always seems like this kind of thing is just too easy for a guy like him. I was most impressed with David Kross, however, and he didn't even get his name on the poster. I believe he had more screen time than either Ralph Fiennes or Kate Winslet's buttocks even though initially I thought he was only going to be around to set up a much larger story with Fiennes and Winslet. Instead, he gives the performance of the movie, just nailing emotionally every single thing a 15-year-old coming-of-age would be going through in this situation--curiosity, joy (pretty easy when he has to be happy seeing a naked Kate Winslet though, I guess), confusion, anger, betrayal, innocence, epiphany, heartache. He's so good and every bit as naked as Kate Winslet, maybe even more naked. And he'd probably rather be naked than wear the swimming trunks he's forced to wear in this thing. Bruno Ganz, who reminded me that I need to see Wings of Desire again, is also really good as Michael's professor. At the center of all this, much more than the Holocaust which is around only to add a dimension, is the love story. That first seduction scene is so well done, right down to the dripping of the faucet. Coal's involved; coal, the oldest trick in the MILF book, I think. The sex scenes are as tasteful as a bicycle ride through the country, and they're just as palpably passionate as the scenes where young Michael is reading to Hanna which is not to say they're not passionate because there is something beautiful about those, even when he's reading from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which seemed strange and inexplicable to me. And the emotional stuff got to me, probably because my defenses were weakened by sickness and/or crippling depression, but I either cried or nearly cried during a confession and an unwrapping of cassette tapes. Another powerful scene, although one that threatened to become pitifully cliched, showed Michael touring one of the camps alone, a scene sans anything fancy at all and barely even with music.

But my favorite moment of this whole movie was easily an "Attaboy, Luther!" moment when the sextet of defendants walked into the courtroom for the last time and one guy belts out a "Nazi whore!" There's an extra who just saw and grabbed hold of his moment to shine. You have to love that.

I'm not sure this really deals with the big issues well enough, but it sure is chunky. There's the idea of sex and literature taking place of actual communication, something that I imagine would be tough to share with your daughter. The need for scapegoats; human beings' abilities to fulfill what is needed for fellow human beings; how we handle guilt, both individually and collectively; the prioritizing of our faults; redemption for the sins of the masses; who deserves kindness and when; whether or not a person is necessarily the sum of his or her biggest decisions. And allegorically, young Michael and old Michael seem to represent different stages of a country dealing with its own troubled past. This certainly does tackle a lot, but even without all that, it's a powerful enough and completely believable love story, a little predictable but no less powerful.