Talking Skin

It is funny how morality doesn’t matter in law. What important to some people is, if it is legal. It is funny how people keep their deepest secret no matter what. Most of the time we don’t care what is right but what is important to us.

The Reader is a holocaust film that doesn’t really focus on German war atrocities. It is a love story between a teenage boy named Michael Berg (young Michael Berg was played by David Kross) and Hannah Schmitz (Kate Winslet) a tram conductor on her 30s in which she seduced and taught carnal knowledge and love to a boy she called kid. Part of their sexual simulation, the kid read her some classic books from school.

Stephen Daldry direction is superb and as always everything was executed gracefully. I love the poignancy of every scene –brilliant and beautiful, so beautiful it hurts to see them. The love scene was straightforward and metaphorical all at once. I can say that all of the actors did a very good job, and the new German actor David Kross’ performance was impressive. Winslet brought something for the audience – a feeling of uncertainty on how to feel about Hannah’s character. You will think that there are something wrong happened to her but left unspoken.

When Hannah decided to move on, Michael is distraught when he finds one day, that she has disappeared and got more shocked when he see her after couple of years, defending herself on a trial court. Hannah was convicted to life imprisonment for the crimes she was involved in Auschwitz when she work there as an SS guard.

Ralph Fiennes played the grown up Michael Berg now a lawyer still remembers all the memories he has during his teenage years and still extremely dejected by what happened. He sent Hannah some audio tape of the books he read for her before. Tries to reconnect to her and accompany her during her loneliness.

The Reader tackled issues of outstanding significance. It is not only a story of two people having a torrid affair during their tumultuous days and neediness but a story of Germany at war. It discusses the complexities of morality of every individual.

The movie was compelling; will stir away your emotion; will make you understand the abstractions in human behaviour.