The Reader Might Leave You Asking - Guilt or Lack Of?

Rating: Null/10 (25 September 2017)

As more and more people in modern society fail to clearly identify the difference between Love and Lust – it's little wonder there are so many poor marriages and divorce. 'The Reader' is yet another of the many, so-called 'romantic' movies, spinning yarns of the power of first 'love'. In this case, it's the love/lust between a 15yr old lad and a 36yr old woman named Hanna (Winslet). She, as it turns out was an SS guard in a Nazi death camp during WW11 – we all know this situation "she/they were just doing their job - like everyone else". This particular story begins more than a decade after her war service. Now she's working as a tram conductor and the lad, is a student whom she assists in the street - following his suffering a fever-induced vomiting session. She takes him to her apartment, cleans him up and then assists him back to his parent's home. He returns with flowers to thank her and before we know it she has her clothes off and heavily involved in instant seduction – better known as 'lust'.
It's not always easy to figure just what screenwriter David Hare and director Stephen Daldry are wanting to highlight as the chief focus of their adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's novel (as it tended to be with this duo's earlier collaboration, 'The Hours' in '02). The first section concentrates too heavily on the sexual relationship - with over detailed sequences featuring heavy bouts of nudity and sexual experiments. Reviewer, Thelma Adams of the Huffington Post quite rightly identified these scenes as borderline child pornography (little more than abuse). This activity has been carefully set-up to be 'accepted' by the viewer as the 'norm' but, is it really quite so? Hanna is a troubled woman and often treats her 'Kid' harshly. Following their summer 'encounters', she eventually disappears and her 'kid' is left seriously distressed and confused.
It's here, the movie shifts its tone to become an examination of a war crimes trial. More ambiguity within the writing surfaces - with what amounts to being heavy scrutiny of whether it's worse to publicly admit being 'illiterate' or someone who assisted with murdering hundreds of innocent people? The movie is well acted and slickly photographed yet, seems very long for its two-hour running time. While it obviously pleased the academy (it doesn't take much these days) and some audiences – it will, and has, left serious analytical thinkers unhappy with what they will clearly 'read' between the lines.