- So… Lena Olin is not, in fact, Ralph Fiennes’ therapist in this as the trailer had led me to believe. She plays a Holocaust survivor who escaped a fire that the rest of Kate Winslet’s prisoners perished in. I suppose her character ends up acting as a therapist for Ralph Fiennes in the end even though she specifically tells him not to come to her for catharsis.
- Kate Winslet’s nipples must have had their own contract for this film and they definitely should have negotiated higher billing because if we’re going by total screen time, I’m pretty sure we see them more than we see Ralph Fiennes and he gets second billing.
- I think Roger Deakins is the DP on at least three Oscar contenders this year. I sit through the credits and think “Oh yes, there he is again.” He’s inescapable! Not that this is a bad thing, because he’s rather good.
- I was reading up on the book this is adapted from and in the book Hanna teaches herself to read in prison and spends time pouring over books by Holocaust survivors. In the movie, she simply re-reads all the books that Michael had read aloud to her during their fabulous but fleeting phase of frequent and forbidden fornication. This kind of puts a whole different spin on her eventual suicide in prison because any sense of reparation she might have tried to make mentally for her actions is extremely diminished because there’s no context for amends. She herself says to Michael before her death that she hasn’t spent any time revisiting what she’s done. I think she attended the Briony Tallis School of Atonement™. Granted, unlike Briony, it’s impossible for her to atone in any satisfactory way — as Hanna says, what she feels or thinks about the subject doesn’t change the fact that all those people are dead. Like the dilemma Michael finds himself in, we can’t really sympathize with Hanna anyway without completely diminishing the gravity of her actions so maybe it’s all moot that there’s no moral context for what should be her admission of guilt.
- I liked that Michael numbered his cassette tapes with increasing numbers of dots in addition to actual numbers so that Hanna would know what order to listen to them in.
- When Michael arranges for an apartment for Hanna when she is scheduled to be paroled, he furnishes it with the LILLBERG sofa (Froarp slipcover, birch frame), two black LACK side tables, and a REGOLIT lamp shade from Ikea, amongst other things. I couldn’t decide which was more horrifying: that the perpetrator of war crimes was getting out on parole or that I wondered if there was an Ikea product history website that would help me determine whether or not you could get the LILLBERG sofa in 1988.
- There really is far too much sex in this movie. I just… I don’t watch Holocaust movies to be titillated. You get one scene and that’s it. See: Schindler’s List. (At least I think there’s only one in that one.)
The Reader
Meh.
IMDB Plot Synopsis Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Burk re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.