fertilecelluloid Review of The Reader

The Reader (2008)

Hetero love from a gay perspective is problematic

[5/10 · 26 January 2009]

A teenage boy named Michael (David Kross) has a passionate love affair with Hanna (Kate Winslet), a tram conductor in Berlin. Years later, while studying to be a lawyer, he discovers that Hanna is on trial, and he finds himself in a position to alter the outcome. Does he act? You have to see the film to find out. The first half is devoted to the relationship between the teenage Michael and Hanna. Ralph Fiennes, who plays the adult Michael in his usual sooky way, reflects back on his decision, so the film is a series of flashbacks. The second half busies itself with the trial, the outcome, and Michael's effort to balance the scales of justice. I was involved up to a point with this movie. It didn't bowl me over. The sexual relationship between Michael and Hanna was meant to be erotic, but it was shot like incest. I suspect the director is gay because he brought no eroticism to the hetero encounters. Michael was filmed as a gay man would film him. Lots of frontals. I felt that there was no sexual interest behind the camera in Winslet. Is that an issue? Yes, it's an issue because we have to believe that Michael would be sexually into this older woman. I didn't believe it. Stephen Daldry didn't, either, or couldn't. To be fair, a hetero would shoot lots of female frontals if given the opportunity, so it's horses for courses. Daldry was simply a bad choice for this story. Because I couldn't get comfortable with the relationship, I couldn't empathize with the characters. Finnes really irritated me, too. His sullen, closed character was simply not an interesting subject for a film, no matter how convincingly he played him.