Even Winslet Can't Help 'The Reader'

    It seems to be that every awards season, a movie manages to get an inexplicable amount of attention.  This is usually a Weinstein Company movie, and this year that movie would be ‘The Reader.’
    ‘The Reader’ focuses on a man, Michael Berg (plays by David Kross and later by Ralph Fiennes) who at the age of 15 enters into a romantic affair with a woman, Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), who is twenty years his senior.  It is a classic story of an older woman teaching a young man the ways of love making, but in this movie both claim to be in love with the other.  This movie also strays from the norm in the fact that Michael’s gift to Hanna does not seem to be a chance to recapture her youth, as is so often the case in these stories, but the fact that he reads to her.  One might ask if Hanna asks him to read to her because she is illiterate and yes that is true, though the filmmakers seem to want this to be a surprise revealed later in the film.  The affair last several months until the day Hanna abruptly moves way, leaving a heartbroken Michael behind.
    The movie flashes forward a few years to the time when Michael is in law school.  He and a few other select students attend the trial of six Nazi guards who stand accused of murder, one of whom happens to be Hanna.  Michael, still haunted by his first love, finds the trial nearly unbearable to watch, even more so as the evidence mounts against Hanna.  The rest of the movie focuses on the lasting effects that the love affair and the trial have on them.
    Very little of this movie seems to be done well.  The script jumps between the past Michael and the Michael of the present without much reasoning.  When we see Hanna as an old woman, the make up job looks like Winslet is performing in a high school production, covered in powder and fake wrinkles.  Even the sound is faulty, as the clanging of Hanna’s cell is loudly dramatic.
    The biggest issue of the movie, however, is the romance between Michael and Hanna.  The movie goes to great lengths to show how erotic their love is, as is evident by the amount of time Kross and Winslet spend on screen naked.  However, these are two emotionally detached people - the serious Michael and the secretive Hanna - who never seem to fully let on to themselves, or the audience, how much the relationship means to them.  The viewer is left to rationalize all the reasons this particular romance has a life long affect on the two loves, since the movie never seems to let these people show that love.
    Even the lovely Winslet, who tries so hard to make us care about her character, can’t save the movie.  Those who plan to see this movie for her award winning performance should realize her Oscar is more of a life time achievement award than an actual reflection of her performance in this movie.  It’s really no fault of hers, or Fiennes or the young Kross, that their talents are wasted.  Even great actors need a little help and sadly, this cast gets none.

Grade: D