The Reader is not loud, but has its moments

Rating: 7/10 (21 February 2009)

The entire movie is complex, multi-dimensional and needs time to digest. It's about the consequences of an affair and the underlying sin/guilt of the affair and the past. 33-year-old Hanna Schmitz had an affair with a 15-year-old boy Michael Berg. 10 years after the end of this summer affair, Hanna was trialled for mass-murdering 300 Jews in the concentration camp. Berg witnessed the whole trial, but was ultimately reluctant to meet Hanna personally. The court sentenced Hanna to be imprisoned for the rest of her life, after Hanna confessed her responsibility as a camp guard of sending women to their deaths. When Hanna was in the jail, Berg couldn't let her go in his memory and kept mailing special presents to her......
At the very conclusion of the movie, the audiences were able to see the immorality/guilt/sins of Hanna comes partially from her illiteracy. But in the trial, in the very law process which decided the fate of her, it's the consequences of the guilt that mattered. Throughout the movie, Hanna always looked confused and conflicted. In the affair with the "kid", aka young Michael, she infected Michael with such confusion and conflict. Lately, in the year 1988, when Michael had returned the tin of money Hanna preserved for the Jew victim who accused her, this flow of confusion had come to a conclusion. The movie can be divided into 2 perspectives, the guilt's and the victim's. Hanna was reviewed by Michael in both perspectives so he had the most mixed and conflicting feeling for Hanna. In some sense, Hanna, the immoral senior woman who seduced Michael into an affair with her, had destroyed Michael's marriage and integrity of family before he had both. So Michael, a victim to her, blamed her for dumping him. On the other side, he sympathized with her in the trial because the trial nonetheless aroused people's hatred against Hanna, who was actually illiterate and shouldn't have been sentenced so harshly. In Hanna's perspective, she took an interest in Michael maybe because Michael was considered an reincarnation of the victims in the camp. She made Michael do the same thing she asked the prisoners to do--to read books for her. Their connection, the reading of the books, had become the only connections again, when Michael began to record the reading of the books he used to read to her. It's actually not hard to understand her suicide in the end, since she doesn't have much to live for, and she couldn't face Michael again. There are of course more than one explanations to all of these, when you consider the movie't not trying to tell a flat story but rather a 3-dimensional one.
The movie had a lot of sentimental moments, and tried to discuss the topic about what's the proper criteria of guilt. Should people be prosecuted for real? Does the legalistic system rise people's rage and hatred rather than comforting the victims? It probably took the position that used to belong to The Dark Knight in the best picture Oscar nominations. We can tell this movie is somehow made directly for winning Oscar, so why not give it a chance?