Always interested, never entertained, impressed by acting

Rating: 7/10 (15 January 2009)

In 1958 Germany, 35 year old tram conductor Hannah embarks on an affair with 15 year old Michael. Before each session of sex, she makes him read to her. The affair lasts all summer but, when offered promotion to an office job, Hannah quits and moves on. Eight years later, law student Michael attends the trial of Hannah and six other women as war criminals - between them they allowed prisoners to be burnt to death. When asked for a sample of her handwriting to prove that she didn't write the report into what happened, Hannah confesses that she did write it, and is sentenced to life imprisonment as opposed to the 4 years the other defendants get: at this point Michael realises that Hannah is illiterate and therefore innocent of the greater crime. He respects her decision and keeps the truth to himself. Years later he finds the books he had read to her, and begins to read them again onto tape, which he sends to her in prison. Hannah, touched by this gesture, takes one of the books from the prison library and by matching the number of spoken words with words on the page, starts to teach herself how to read and write, writing short simple letters to Michael. As her sentence comes to an end, Michael is prevailed upon to help her with accommodation and work, but Hannah takes her own life before she is released. Michael finally takes his daughter to visit Hannah's grave and begins to tell her of the relationship he has kept secret all his life.
This film is an acting masterclass. Kate Winslet is utterly magnetic whenever she is on screen, delivering a Hannah who is complex and simple, compassionate and cruel, full of contradictions and, quite clearly, someone who is faulty in some fundamental way. Fiennes' adult Michael is equally good despite less screen time, though perhaps somewhat lower key (not that any of the performances are particularly flamboyant). And 18 year old David Kross as young Michael is the glue holding the first half of the film together in a performance of remarkable maturity.
The main problem with this film is that while it might be a masterclass in acting, it is never that engaging. Young Michael engages our sympathies, but his experiences with Hannah - particularly the court case and its immediate aftermath - damage him, and the film never fully recovers from the remoteness which then envelops the only really sympathetic character. The only sequence which moved me to tears was when Hannah teaches herself to read and writes her first halting letter to Michael.
This film is well worth seeing, but I'm not sure I shall want to see it again soon. I can imagine it being Oscar-nominated - it is very worthy - but I'm not sure it is particularly entertaining.
And I was greatly saddened to note the much-missed Anthony Minghella (with whom I appeared in a school play back in 1970) on the credits, producing with Sydney Pollack, equally missed.