A Very Morally Polarizing Movie

Rating: 6/10 (2 February 2009)

This is another one of those difficult to watch movies. Unfortunately, there is nothing neutral about this movie. Anything I mention about it can spoil another person's appreciation of it. I think it would be safe to say that this is a very polarizing movie. It plays two very emotionally charged cards which are bound to upset viewers -- one is about pedophilia, and the other one is about the Holocaust.
Yet here it is, a nominee for Best Picture in the upcoming Oscar Awards. Being the most unexpected of the five nominees, this is the film most blamed for kicking out the popular choice "The Dark Knight". So, does "The Reader" measure up?
**************** Spoilers ahead!
The first third of the movie is of a very sexual nature. The female party Hanna Schmitz is 36, but the male Michael Berg is only 15! OK, granted that even if the female party looks like Kate Winslet, this would still be disturbing for some. Though admittedly not so much than if the sexes were reversed, would it?
Aside from this detail, those very frank execution of these sex scenes were really unexpected especially since one party is supposed to be a minor. There was even uninhibited frontal nudity by both Winslet (she's not the Rose of "Titanic" as we remember it anymore) and the 17 year-old promising (and daring) new actor David Kross. And I thought they did not really resort to such gratuitous exposure anymore these days, but I guess this is the proverbial "for art's sake" in its truest sense. However, as an unusual fetish, Hanna would request Michael to read books to her before they would make love, thus giving their affair another dimension; and this movie its title.
Hanna and Michael's affair occurred in the summer of 1958, abruptly ending when Hanna left the city. The setting then fast forwards to 1966 when Michael was attending law school. As his seminar class sat in on a case involving atrocities of Holocaust guards, he was shocked to hear his beloved Hanna's voice on the witness stand as one of the accused guards. In the trial, Hanna withholds a vital secret that could have spared her from a life sentence. Should Michael reveal himself and this secret he also realized in order to save Hanna?
Fast forward again to the 1970s when Michael (now played by a very cold Ralph Fiennes) gets divorced and visits his old home. There he finds his collection of novels, so he suddenly decides to record himself reading these novels aloud as he did before, and send these tapes to Hanna in prison. Of course, these recordings succeeded to buoy and encourage Hanna's spirits and gave her a renewed sense of purpose in life. However, in 1988, the story of Hanna and Michael ends unexpectedly for a reason I am not entirely clear on.
The best part of this movie is really Kate Winslet, who is so bold as to accept and tackle such a thanklessly negative role like Hanna, and yet still come out as someone that audiences can somehow sympathize with. This audacity of Ms. Winslet is perhaps why the Academy correctly elevated this role to Lead (not the Supporting that the Golden Globe recognized). However, this is not to downplay Kate's effort in "Revolutionary Road" which is no walk in the park either. Her roles were both offbeat, irrational and miserable, yet she was able to portray them with sensitivity and dignity. She is ripe for an Oscar win this February.
The script loses points with me not really because of the emotional buttons it pushes, but because it fails to clarify character motivations that drive critical moments of the story. The great mystery that the movie's tag-line invites to unlock almost seems too trivial in the greater scheme of the events. That meeting of Berg and the Holocaust survivor at the end was not very well written and fails to evoke its planned dramatic purpose.
The treatment by Director Stephen Daldry may be a little too bleak. Although, it has the same feel and look of the other Daldry masterpiece "The Hours." But I guess there may have been no other way to portraying the emotionally-charged material, but straightforwardly and frankly, as this movie certainly did.