Very well-acted but slow, depressing and pointless

Rating: 2/10 (10 March 2010)

This is about a 15 year old German boy named Michael Berg (David Kross) who,in 1958, starts an affair with a woman named Hanna (Kate Winslet) who is old enough to be his mother. They lose touch and it jumps to 1966 where he is studying law. He discovers Hanna is on trial for being an SS guard at concentration camps. He's destroyed and this leads to discussions on who is guilty and who isn't. She's sentenced to life in jail. Then it jumps to 1980 where Michael is now played by Ralph Fiennes. For no discernible reason that I could see he gets in touch with Hanna. Then the movie slows to a crawl and just drags out the last half hour.
OK--the acting is superb. I can see why Winslet won the Oscar for this (even though I found her better in "Revolutionary Road") and Fiennes is just great but this movie is slow, dreary and ultimately pointless. The nude sex scenes between Winslet and Kross are about as unerotic as you could get and their relationship just doesn't make sense. The trial scenes in 1966 are interesting but the discussions on guilt and who is guilty go on endlessly and get repetitious quickly. After 90 minutes I thought the movie was over but we get another 34 minutes that is deadly dull and completely pointless. This is one of those movies that has "We're trying to win an Oscar" written all over it. It's slow and somber and full of weighty issues--but that DOESN'T make it a good movie. If it were interesting I would have no problem but it isn't. The movie makers seem more interested in the nude sex scenes between Kross and Winslet than anything else. A boring and depressing movie. It gets a 2 for Winslet and Fiennes alone.