Author Bernhard Schlink Publisher Random HouseHailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of post war Germany
USA 124 min Rated MA15 Dir: Stephen DaldryCast: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Jeanette Hain, David Kross
When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.
"The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink is a morally complex story. Did the film version deal with the complicated issues and deliver a powerful and emotional story to match the book?
1 comment:
It was a good movie and was about how younger Germans perceived the Holocaust. It had a young law student at the trial of 6 women who had been guards at one of the concentration camps. The young man had known one of these woman as his first sexual experience when she was 32 and he 16. He knew that she was illiterate because he used to read to her and she could barely sign her name. All the other accused reckoned she was in charge and had written a report which she says she did because of shame that she couldn't write rather than shame at the horrible mass murder she was part of. The young man could have been a witness and saved her from the 20 years jail she was given if he had let the judges know she couldn't have written the document. The other accused all got 5 years.
He sends her tapes and a tape player of him reading to her while she is in jail. But never visited her.
In the discussion afterward I found it strange that many were more shocked at the sex between disparate aged people than the mass murder of the concentration camps. Some thought she was a pedophile because the boy was so young. I know that the age of consent has lengthened in our time. At one time a few hundred years ago you could marry at 14 a man many years your senior. It was a very thought provoking film. The judge at the trial and the young lawyers tutor were asking, not whether it was morally reprehensible, but was it lawful? The accused asked him What would you have done? In the discussion I said that many bad things in history Slave ships, Convicts in chains, The Irish potato famine even the stolen generation were "Lawful at the time they were enacted" We all like to think we are noble and these things wouldn't have happened if we were there. In reality most of us wouldn't be able to intervene and if we did would end up as a victim too.
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