Worth Seeing for the Kate Winslet Oscar Victory

Rating: 7/10 (22 April 2013)

This is one of those times where I'm kind of at a loss for words (or as much as I can be). I don't know what it was specifically, but I can't seem to put a finger on why this movie had no effect on me. It has all the right elements for stirring things up emotionally: a forbidden love affair, dark secrets, the Holocaust...and yet for the most of the film, I remained relatively detached.
The Reader tells the story of a summer love affair between Michael Berg, a high school student and Hanna Schmitz, a woman twice his age who works as a tram conductor in Neustadt, Germany. Throughout the affair, Hanna requests that Michael to read aloud to her and mesmerized by his current circumstance, he willingly obliges. Then one day he arrives at her apartment to find it empty and Hanna gone without a word.
Eight years later, Michael is attending the Nazi War Crimes Trials as a law student and is floored as Hanna has re-entered his life as a defendant in the case (the theatrical previews show this so I'm not giving anything away).
There are some great conversations between the students and their professor in regards to the difference between guilt according to the law and guilt according to morality and David Kross does an exceptional job conveying the mangled and conflicted heartache seeing her in this revealing light, but I'm beginning to realize that my problem was ultimately with Hanna's character. Maybe I wasn't invested enough in their relationship or maybe it was the way Hanna was written, but I just could not wrap my head around it. She comes off like a genuinely clueless simpleton during the trial but in earlier scenes she is fierce, manipulative and strong.
A couple of the tag-lines for the film are "Unlock the mystery" and "How far would you go to keep a secret?" I didn't feel that the mystery was too...well...mysterious and I didn't believe, as a plot device, it really held the weight that brought these two worlds crashing down.
This role earned Kate Winslet her sixth Academy Award nomination. A friend of mine was confused as to why she was nominated for The Reader instead of Revolutionary Road, but I have a feeling that in order to prevent a split in the votes and potentially missing a nomination in the Best Actress category altogether, she submitted herself for only one role.
I love her and think she should already have an Oscar in the bag from previous roles, but it would be hypocritical of me to say that anybody should win based on a body of work. I know people feel differently and I don't think they're wrong. It's just my belief that each year should be a clean slate and you should be awarded that year for the specific role you are nominated for. I think the Oscars should be like any sporting event: One team against the other and the outcome is based on the performance during that specific match-up despite a winning or losing record.
However, the Oscars are determined by a group of people and not by goals, touchdowns, runs, or three-pointers. If Kate Winslet does win, even though this wasn't my favorite role of hers by far, my human side will be thrilled... even if my critical side will still be at a bit of a loss.