The Reader.

IMPORT-

I finally saw the Oscar nominated and winning film, THE READER. Kate Winslet won for best supporting actress this past February for her portrayal of Hannah the illiterate Nazi. Sounds like a sitcom character, the illiterate Nazi. I guess Winslet deserved to win?  She is a great actress and I guess if you put her in a awards type movie, time period, nazi WW2, and aging throughout she is bound to get a nom. This coming just after she made fun of this exact type of role in Ricky Gervais' EXTRAS series. (which if you haven't, you must check out.)

The movie starts out with the two main characters Hannah, and Michael missing a lot of clothes and getting it on, and then moves about the later half of the 20th century following Ralph Fiennes' Michael character while he deals with seeing Hannah tried to life in prison, knowing how she could have been partly absolved, and then sending her tapes of books he used to read during their affair. They eventually meet at the end of her sentence as his character has decided to help her adjust to life outside of prison.

None of this movie was jarring and took you from the story, so in that aspect it was fine. The only thing somewhat unbelievable was Hannah saying she couldn't read or write which would have gotten her 4 years in prison versus life. But one of the resonating themes of this movie was how we tend to keep things inside. Hannah did so, as did Michael. Much of the movie didn't really fit together. It really didn't let the character of Hannah go into what she did. Which would seem to be a somewhat powerful thing. Again she kept it inside of her. I think not being clear to what it was saying made this somewhat emotionally detaching when watching it. The ending seemed to say, as Michael opened up to his daughter about his life, to open up to those close to you. Which comes up rather suddenly in the end and not really a clear theme throughout. Overall it just seems mixed up, and I'm not sure what to take from this movie. It seems to just tell this amazing story and also try to say something, but I can't see what exactly.

The success of this movie in the Oscar season I think seems to be the typical subject matter that the Oscars eat up, and some good PR from the Miramax company. This is not a bad movie, but unless you really like to see the Oscar nominated pictures I would skip it. Your not missing too much, and Winslet has had better roles in the past, and will again in the future. Not the first time a actor or actress has won a Oscar when the committee realized they should have given to the person in the past.