Read the book instead

Loaded with expectations, The Reader brings only disappointment

By Zipporah Porton
Published: January 13th, 2009 | 12:40pm

I really wanted to like The Reader. I went into the theater with a love for Kate Winslet, admiration for director Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours), and a vague notion that the movie had something to do with lovers torn apart because one is a former Nazi. Oscar rumblings also made the movie that much more appealing. After the first half I loathed the film, and by the end I just felt disappointment.

When Michael Berg (played by Ralph Fiennes as an adult and David Kross as a youth) first meets Hanna Schmitz (Winslet), he is a boy of 15 sick with Scarlet Fever and she is a train conductor somewhere in her 30s. After Berg recovers, he and Schmitz soon make passionate love on a regular basis, providing that he reads to her first from books like The Odyssey and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The affair lasts the summer, and it never ceases to make the viewer uncomfortable. The actor that plays Berg look a bit older than 15, but their cold and distant relationship seems to go on and on and they are naked again and again, which led me to wonder if the movie was going to have a point.

Due to an abrupt and unexplained departure by Schmitz, the affair ends. Years later, Berg is studying to be a lawyer and his class sits in on a case involving Schmitz and other women accused of atrocities performed at concentration camps. At one point Schmitz comments that these events occurred over 20 years ago, which does not seem right in terms of the timeline. This shaky timeline is made all the more confusing when the plot jumps around to show Fiennes as the adult Berg, who spends most of the film mooning about his past. I'll stop the plot description to avoid any “spoilers,” but part of the trial hinges on a secret of Hanna’s that Berg all of a sudden realizes late in life, though I had thought it was quite obvious about 10 minutes into the film.

It’s somewhat irritating that a film set in Germany has mainly British actors speaking English with a German accent, with Kross as the only actual German actor. I understand the reason for this and can let it slide, except for the fact that by the end of the film Winslet’s accent is somehow thicker. Additionally, it’s a shame so much time is spent on the romantic relationship between Winslet and Kross – this is the least interesting part of the film, but takes up a considerable amount of time.

I still have great respect for Winslet, and now she has earned a Golden Globe for her performance. I have to attribute this win to her overall body of work because this is nowhere near one of her best roles, which I blame on the way the character is written. Winslet herself does a fine job of inhabiting a character that isn't given more than one-dimension and has completely obvious motivations; complicated she is not, though I don’t believe this is the director’s intention. Schmitz is a flawed character with much potential, but instead comes off as a heartless shrew with minimal intelligence. Also, at times Winslet dips into the realm of overacting.

The Reader is based on the auto-biographical, award-winning novel by Bernard Schlink, and I can see how this could be a powerful book and deserving of a spot on Oprah's book club. However, as a film it doesn't work, partly because everyone tries way too hard. When a film includes gratuitous, “artful” nudity in one scene and abandoned concentration camps in the next, then you have to picture the producer giggling with glee at the prospect of a Oscar nom. Unfortunately, the details and the intriguing parts of the story are tossed aside to punctuate the earnestness of the young lad in his search for, well gosh, I’m not sure. Skip the film and read the book instead.