Movie Review: The Reader

I enjoyed The Reader; I was reluctant to watch this movie at first because I am kind of prudish when it comes to child sex. The film is based on the book by Bernhard Schlink. The first portion of the film is very heavy on sex between a fifteen year old boy and a 30ish woman in Germany; this relationship defines the boy's life. He grows up to be an unhappy law student and an unhappy lawyer. He feels rejected by his lover when she disappears with no notice; he feels rejected by her several times because his expectations in his first love. During their relationship, he read to her; she was illiterate.

While attending law school our boy, Michael, sees his lost lover, Hannah, while she is on trial for Nazi war crimes. Hannah is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. After twenty years, Michael obtains a divorce and begins sending Hannah tapes of his voice reading books for her. She teaches herself to read using these tapes. He agrees to pick her up and set her up in a job.

I enjoyed the complexity of the relationship between Micheal and Hannah. His desperate need for her love, and the consequences later in life for him. Her need to remain removed from him. I spent a great deal of time crying through the end of the film. I don't know why. I cried every time the tapes played a new book. The whole story is tragic: the victims of the Nazis, the lost love of a child, anger of Michael toward Hannah, and sadness of shame that Hannah feels.

David Ross, Kate Whinslet, and Ralph Fiennes are brilliant!

I'm giving it 5/5 and buying the book.