2008, USA
Crime, Drama, Romance, War
How do we reconcile the moralities of others, with relationships that evolve from exciting secrets into shameful experiences when we learn the truth of another's past? The Reader asks such dangerous questions and leaves no clear pathway to interwoven ethical dilemmas.
When 15-year-old Michael (David Kross, in an impressive breakthrough role) becomes ill on the street, 36-year-old stranger Hannah (a haggard-looking Kate Winslet) guides him home. After months of scarlet fever, he seeks her out to thank her for the kind gesture, and without warning the two begin an affair. There is little chemistry to be detected aside from shared willingness, yet Hannah becomes his teacher in lovemaking and he becomes her personal entertainment. Their daily routine consists of sex and reading from books ranging from The Adventures of Tintin to The Odyssey. Hannah is often cold and business-like when not overwrought with emotion from a story, and their relationship consists of odd dependence.
Years later as a law student, Michael observes a case in which six women are charged with the deaths of 300 people as guards in a World War II concentration camp; Hannah is one of the guards. While the other women expectedly deny charges, Hannah brazenly answers questions without pausing. Her responses sound simple-minded, as if she were merely asked about job performance rather than considering the lives she was responsible for destroying. Her behavior is baffling, especially to the young man who shared a unique relationship with her.
Interwoven into this situation is the oddly planted fact that Hannah cannot read. This should be no great spoiler as it becomes obvious when she constantly insists that he read to her and becomes more enticed by his books than his body. Yet, this becomes an odd crux used to justify many of her actions: why she joined the SS, why she treated her inmates differently, why she received a different sentencing than the other guards. She masks her shame over illiteracy with a detached demeanor that she allows to distance herself from her actions. This is quite a stretch in justifying or even enhancing the actions of a Nazi enforcer.
Yet there is no satisfying answer for such behaviors. As Michael's fellow law student flatly proclaims the women evil and deserving of the same deaths they inflicted, Michael struggles with his past with Hannah. If she is capable of performing her duties without remorse, what does that say about his attraction to her? Before this discovery, their relationship was a forbidden romance as she guided him into manhood. Afterward, he becomes connected to one of history's greatest atrocities, specifically something which took place the year he was born. Yet due to this relationship, he holds knowledge which could help bring her a lesser sentence, and this obligation is a horrifying burden to bear.
Director Stephen Daldry delivers Bernhard Schlink's book with care, but leaves all wounds open for dissection. There is nothing tidy about this story, no satisfying explanations to tie together the strings of humanity. The Reader is presented, scars and all.