Adapted to suit US tastes?

Rating: 7/10 (24 April 2009)

Perhaps it is the fault of expectations formed after the parade of awards, or, more likely, of those formed after having read the amazing book by Bernard Schlink? Whichever it is, I found The Reader-movie quite unnecessarily sentimentalized.
Ralph Fiennes, one of my favorite actors, plays so badly that it almost causes a toothache. The final scene, with the daughter and the grave, is simply pathetic.
Additionally, the film introduces scenes that I do not remember from the book, and which by their ambiguity acquire a sinister meaning. When the judge asks the mother-survivor of the camp how many people died in the fire, she answers that they all died. Then he asks her how she survived, and she does not answer. What are we to deduce from that missing answer?
Further, when Michael visits the daughter-survivor, the opulence of her New York flat is in a striking contrast with the pathetic prison cell that we have seen just before. Is the conclusion that Jews, if they survive, always know how to take care of themselves? Lena Ohlin is completely unconvincing in the role of the aged daughter.
Kate Winslett is doing her best, although one would think that, what with the contemporary knowledge of cosmetics, one should age women on the screen much better. (Well, I do admit that I think it quite often - they all tend to look like wearing peculiar masks.)
All this does not take away the utmost importance of moral questions asked in the film (not the ones about German responsibility, asked so many times before): did Michael did what he did from respect for her, from fear for his own situation, from the sense of (legal) justice, or from all of the above? It brings to mind Giorgio Agamben's reading of "Bartleby, The Scrivener" and the force (or lack of it) and the consequences of "I prefer not to"...
I do admit, however, that mine is a European reading, based on great many books and films on Holocaust. Perhaps this sentimental version of The Reader fulfills a useful role, gently introducing North Americans to the complexities and horrors of Holocaust.