Review of The Reader (2008) by Matty S — 22 Dec 2013

The Reader is a film that takes place shortly after the Holocaust.

Although I have watched several films from just before the Holocaust to current day with strong story lines surrounding the lives of Holocaust survivors, war criminals, bystanders and loved ones; I have not viewed a story quite like this.

How is it possible that the The Reader could elicit feelings of compassion, disgust, empathy, mistrust, hope and hopelessness all for the same character? A women who was responsible for several hundred deaths of innocent persons.. A woman who seemed to not understand what she did... A woman who seemed not disturbed by what she did on the outside... A woman with issues of her own.. someone who would take advantage of a young man, at the age of 15, for her own needs... but somehow, a woman of quiet love, a shattered heart and perhaps a need to give her victims a satisfaction of making someone pay for what happened to them...

The Reader is a different story. A story that may make one feel conflicted, as it did me. At first wanting to fix the situation, tell someone to wake up and see the obvious problem here... to see that this woman is not what she seems... but then realize that while she isn't entirely what they think she is, she is not innocent either.

I am unsure how I feel about the story after its completion. The characters.. the actors.. they pulled me in... the story made me think... made me look beyond the setting and into the raw humanity...

At first I was going to give it 3 stars, as it wasn't a movie that I enjoyed watching. It was painful. Nor was it a movie that pulled on my heartstrings and made me cry. When I went through and came out the other side I didn't feel good or complete. What I felt was that there is so much more to the lives of those who lived through this terrible time in our history... so many more stories that are conflicted and dirty and muddled and just so human... and then I realized that the movie is nothing close to average and that watching it was time well spent... and the hours that I linger over what I have seen will be as well.