The Reader

Well, I seriously don’t know where or how to begin this from… when you watch a movie, it generally leaves you with an emotion… this one surprisingly leaved me baffled and stoic (precisely what the intention was perhaps!!) and it took me sometime to unwind the complexity and understand the intensity that was presented in 2 hours of unfolding intricacies…scene by scene…

The Reader was on my must watch list for long, because of Kate Winslet's Oscar win, and all I can say is she deserved it more than anyone else perhaps… just because of her 100% commitment to the role.. The character of Hanna Schmitz is by far the most complex and bold character I have ever seen on screen, beautifully portrayed by Winslet in entirety. When you begin to slightly understand the character, it suddenly unwraps a new emotion (or lack of it) making you wonder if you understood it right in the first place!

What undermines the movie to some extent is the mixture of illegitimate relationship with holocaust and illiteracy all at the same time making the emotional drama quite complex to withstand. The first part shows the physical relationship of a boy with a woman double his age. The character of Hanna is motherly at first, then of a woman exploiting a boy, violating and encouraging him for an illegal relationship, emotionally unattached, erotic, weird, frustrated, secretive and delusive. She is someone who finds solace in her physical moments with a young boy and likes to hear him read his school books to her before making love. While Michael begins to fall in love with her, she leaves him.

The second part shows Hanna as a war criminal who is under trial for killing 300 Jews in a holocaust. She is cold, with her laser stare, admitting the crimes, though not regretting them. She seems dumb, naive and blank, who did something so atrocious, because she was asked to do so… "what would you have done?" she asks the judge!!! Michael, now an adolescent law student, is in conflict with his emotions – love hate, enchantment, disgust – all at the same time. He also understands Hanna's secret…why she liked him to read to her… and why she liked other girls to read to her before sending them to gas chambers – she is illiterate!!! However, when the judge asks her if she wrote the fire report.. she admits! She is not ashamed to commit the crime, but is ashamed of her illiteracy!! Hanna gets imprisoned for life…

The third part shows a grown up Michael with a broken marriage, unable to sustain relationships due to his haunting past. He comes to terms with his emotions to Hanna and starts sending her tapes of books in the prison, becoming the reader. Hanna listens to the tapes and over years learns to read and write…after two decades when Michael meets Hanna – she is still the same… unattached, curt, unremorseful, but old, tired and battered now…! My favorite is the last dialogue between Michael and Hanna when in disgust he asks her – what did you learn from all these books, she says.. I have learnt to read and that’s all…!!

The movie completes a full circle with Hanna committing suicide, leaving her money to the only survivor of the holocaust – the girl who used to read to her…and asks Michael to deliver the money to her. The lady does not accept the money and Michael donates it to charity for illiterate people.

There are so many shades in Hanna's unattached character and the impression they leave on Michael's life… Kate gave her body and soul to the character (literally with so many nude scenes!!!) …the younger Michael (David Kross) has also acted beautifully in the first half matching Winslet's performance, or even better than her in some scenes.

But on the whole, the entire movie is gloomy, heavy, depressing, and leaves you with an awful feeling…! Definitely not recommended for young impressionable minds…