Dubious and unremarkable.

Rating: Null/10 (8 January 2009)

There's a rule in cinema that pretty much defines whether or not a story that centres on romance or love manages to engage its viewers in the manner in which it hopes. The best examples of such movies carefully warm us up to the individual characters and then slowly bring them closer and closer until we can't take it anymore; we will them on to find happiness within each other. The Reader, which ostensibly for the first half at the very least- can be described as a romantic drama, can be compelling watching, but only outside of its romantic interests. Hindered with lukewarm chemistry between the two leads and divulging in the obvious facets of a relationship with acute abrasiveness to the point where all subtle nuances are lost, the movie fails to establish its core with any resonance beyond its more obvious façade. As such, The Reader exists as a mostly dubious and unremarkable affair that only ever mildly engages, preferring instead to bore through laborious and dry characterisation than to compel through dynamism and chemistry needed to establish the central theme of love.
For all intents and purposes, Bernhard Schlink's story (upon which David Hare's screenplay is based) is a tale divided into three distinct movements or, acts. Of course, most stories are of this design, yet the problem here is that Schlink, or rather, Hare makes his divisions all too obvious and fragmented to watch unfold. The seam that ties these three stories together are in place- two lovers and their tale of fleeting romance that lasted but a summer- yet the lines that separate them draw far too much attention to themselves than need be. The result is a story that can draw you in, only to perplex you moments later when you are whisked off to a different point in time. Furthermore, as is usually the case, there are acts here that are obviously stronger than others, and one can't help but feel that maybe there was a decent enough story to tell in just the first of the three. Yet indulging in a tale that transverses a series of decades, The Reader feels jarring in its approach, telling a story that has the potential to be gripping and moving, and yet never takes off thanks to its jittering and turbulent structure.
Despite the feature's many technical problems that detract from the entirety of the experience however, there nevertheless remains a select array of elements that succeed in drawing you in. The first and foremost of these lies in the movie's aesthetics department, utilising soft, complementary photography that gives the film a sense of otherworldly realism that is always interesting to watch. Playing along beautifully in the background is the score penned by Nico Muhly, who up until this point has stuck mostly in Hollywood's back garden, so to speak. Muhly's score often complements the visuals in ways that echo the tranquil moments and the much more dissonant scenes built upon tension and conflict with much needed depth. It's a shame then that much of this inevitably goes to waste on a script that fails to establish character and performers who although delivering by the book renderings worthy of a look in for those interested in Oscar noodling- never come off the screen, failing to go beyond their caricature personas and truly touch the viewer.
Taken as a whole, The Reader can be seen as a simple, lukewarm attempt at telling a story of love in all its complications- it also doesn't help that one of them was a guard for the SS. In this context, the movie can charm, but only with a timid sense of poignancy hinted at every half hour or so. The remainder of the feature then can't help but cave under the weight of such contrived pretensions from the director and his cast; we are told there is love here, and we can smell it somewhere off in the distance, but unfortunately that small glint of romance never reaches full climax, crescendo or even resonant motif. Instead The Reader bumbles along for the good part of two hours, middling in and out of mawkish clichés to the point where we honestly don't care where the characters go. Too much scope, with very little development or focus on the smaller aspects of what makes a love story compelling in the first place, The Reader is a troublesome, albeit slightly interesting story (historically speaking) that simply doesn't do enough to make it anything worth remembering.

A review by Jamie Robert Ward (http://www.invocus.net)