THE READER
~a very beautiful and heartbreaking story of love,lost,confusion and illiteracy. A must watched movie. really really made me sad.
Plot
The Reader begins in 1995 Berlin, where Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) is preparing breakfast for a woman who has spent the night with him. After she leaves, Michael watches a U-Bahn pass by, flashing back to a tram in 1958 Neustadt. A teenage Michael (David Kross) gets off because he is feeling sick and wanders around the streets afterwards, finally pausing in the entryway of a nearby apartment building where he vomits. Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), the tram conductor, comes in and assists him in returning home.
Michael (Kross) reads to Hanna (Winslet).Michael, diagnosed with scarlet fever, must rest at home for the next three months. After he recovers he visits Hanna. The 36 year old Hanna seduces and begins an affair with the 15 year old boy. During their liaisons, at her apartment, he reads to her literary works he is studying, such as The Odyssey, The Lady with the Little Dog, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Tintin. After a bicycling trip, Hanna learns she is being promoted to a clerical job at the tram company. She abruptly moves without leaving a trace.
After seeing the adult Michael, a lawyer, we see him (played again by David Kross) at Heidelberg University law school in 1966. As part of a special seminar taught by Professor Rohl (Bruno Ganz), a camp survivor, he observes a trial (similar to the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials) of several women who were accused of letting 300 Jewish women die in a burning church when they were SS guards on the death march following the 1944 evacuation of Auschwitz. Hanna is one of the defendants.
Stunned, Michael visits a former camp himself. The trial divides the seminar, with one student angrily saying there is nothing to be learned from it other than that evil acts occurred and that the older generation of Germans should kill themselves for their failure to act then.
The key evidence is the testimony of Ilana Mather (Alexandra Maria Lara), author of a memoir of how she and her mother survived. Hanna, unlike her fellow defendants, admits that Auschwitz was an extermination camp and that the ten women she chose during each month's Selektion were gassed. She denies authorship of a report on the church fire, despite pressure from the other defendants, but then admits it rather than complying with a demand to provide a handwriting sample.
Michael then realizes Hanna's secret: she is functionally illiterate and has concealed that her whole life. The other female guards who claim that she wrote the report are lying in order to place the brunt of the responsibility on Hanna. Michael informs Rohl that he has information favorable to one of the defendants but is not sure what to do since she wants to avoid disclosing this. Rohl tells him that if he has learned nothing from the past there is no point in having the seminar.
Hanna receives a life sentence for her admitted but untrue leadership role in the church deaths while the other defendants get shorter terms. Michael meanwhile marries, has a daughter and divorces. Rediscovering his books and notes from the time of his affair, he begins reading them into a tape recorder. He sends the cassette tapes, a tape recorder, and the books to Hanna. Eventually she learns to read and write, and she writes back to him.
Michael does not write back or visit, but keeps sending tapes, and in 1988 a prison official (Linda Bassett) telephones him to seek his help with Hanna's transition into society upon her upcoming release. He finds a place for her to live and a job, and finally visits. The night before her release Hanna hangs herself and leaves a tea tin with cash in it and a note to Michael, asking him to give the cash from the tea tin and some money in a bank account to Ilana.
Michael travels to New York. He meets Ilana (Lena Olin) and confesses his past relationship with Hanna. He tells her about the suicide note, and that Hanna was illiterate for most of her life. Ilana tells Michael there is nothing to be learned from the camps. Michael suggests that he donate the money to an organization that combats adult illiteracy, preferably a Jewish one, and she agrees. Ilana keeps the tea tin since it is similar to one stolen from her in Auschwitz.
The film ends with Michael getting back together with his daughter, Julia, at Hanna's grave and beginning to tell her the story.
cigarette:1
STATUS: miss now more than ever
Plot
The Reader begins in 1995 Berlin, where Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) is preparing breakfast for a woman who has spent the night with him. After she leaves, Michael watches a U-Bahn pass by, flashing back to a tram in 1958 Neustadt. A teenage Michael (David Kross) gets off because he is feeling sick and wanders around the streets afterwards, finally pausing in the entryway of a nearby apartment building where he vomits. Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), the tram conductor, comes in and assists him in returning home.
Michael (Kross) reads to Hanna (Winslet).Michael, diagnosed with scarlet fever, must rest at home for the next three months. After he recovers he visits Hanna. The 36 year old Hanna seduces and begins an affair with the 15 year old boy. During their liaisons, at her apartment, he reads to her literary works he is studying, such as The Odyssey, The Lady with the Little Dog, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Tintin. After a bicycling trip, Hanna learns she is being promoted to a clerical job at the tram company. She abruptly moves without leaving a trace.
After seeing the adult Michael, a lawyer, we see him (played again by David Kross) at Heidelberg University law school in 1966. As part of a special seminar taught by Professor Rohl (Bruno Ganz), a camp survivor, he observes a trial (similar to the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials) of several women who were accused of letting 300 Jewish women die in a burning church when they were SS guards on the death march following the 1944 evacuation of Auschwitz. Hanna is one of the defendants.
Stunned, Michael visits a former camp himself. The trial divides the seminar, with one student angrily saying there is nothing to be learned from it other than that evil acts occurred and that the older generation of Germans should kill themselves for their failure to act then.
The key evidence is the testimony of Ilana Mather (Alexandra Maria Lara), author of a memoir of how she and her mother survived. Hanna, unlike her fellow defendants, admits that Auschwitz was an extermination camp and that the ten women she chose during each month's Selektion were gassed. She denies authorship of a report on the church fire, despite pressure from the other defendants, but then admits it rather than complying with a demand to provide a handwriting sample.
Michael then realizes Hanna's secret: she is functionally illiterate and has concealed that her whole life. The other female guards who claim that she wrote the report are lying in order to place the brunt of the responsibility on Hanna. Michael informs Rohl that he has information favorable to one of the defendants but is not sure what to do since she wants to avoid disclosing this. Rohl tells him that if he has learned nothing from the past there is no point in having the seminar.
Hanna receives a life sentence for her admitted but untrue leadership role in the church deaths while the other defendants get shorter terms. Michael meanwhile marries, has a daughter and divorces. Rediscovering his books and notes from the time of his affair, he begins reading them into a tape recorder. He sends the cassette tapes, a tape recorder, and the books to Hanna. Eventually she learns to read and write, and she writes back to him.
Michael does not write back or visit, but keeps sending tapes, and in 1988 a prison official (Linda Bassett) telephones him to seek his help with Hanna's transition into society upon her upcoming release. He finds a place for her to live and a job, and finally visits. The night before her release Hanna hangs herself and leaves a tea tin with cash in it and a note to Michael, asking him to give the cash from the tea tin and some money in a bank account to Ilana.
Michael travels to New York. He meets Ilana (Lena Olin) and confesses his past relationship with Hanna. He tells her about the suicide note, and that Hanna was illiterate for most of her life. Ilana tells Michael there is nothing to be learned from the camps. Michael suggests that he donate the money to an organization that combats adult illiteracy, preferably a Jewish one, and she agrees. Ilana keeps the tea tin since it is similar to one stolen from her in Auschwitz.
The film ends with Michael getting back together with his daughter, Julia, at Hanna's grave and beginning to tell her the story.
cigarette:1
STATUS: miss now more than ever
Labels: favotites, kate winslet, movies, the reader
posted by SEF @ 3:09 PM
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