The Reader ***

Spoiler alert: read no further if you don't want to know why Hanna insists on being read to.

I have to say I just didn't get the point of this movie. Set in post-war Germany, you would think it would be about German guilt and how the next generation deals with the Holocaust. A fifteen year old boy has a summer's affair with an older woman, an affair that seems to have scarred him for life and limited his ability to love anyone else. The woman (a transcendent Kate Winslet) insists on being read to. One days she disappears suddenly, right after she's promoted to an office job rather than continuing as a ticket puncher on the train. As we learn later, she's running from her illiteracy.

And this is my problem with the movie. I just don't buy it. OK, I can see that she might have become an SS guard to hide her illiteracy, although didn't she have to make reports? And how could she apply for a job, much less go on trial for war crimes and no one notice that she can't read? How could her lawyer not know? It's important to the story, because, years later, when the boy (David Kross as the youngster and Ralph Feinnes as the older Michael Berg) is in law school, he sees Hanna again for the first time when she and her fellow SS guards are on trial. Hanna is so ashamed of being illiterate that she claims to have written a report that means a heavy sentence for her, and Michael is so ashamed of the affair that he does not help her reveal this secret. It's a dramatic device that just doesn't hold water.

Michael's betrayal also moves the focus of the movie to himself and his relationships, and away from German guilt, the subject of the law school seminar that brought him back to Hanna, and what we might have thought was the subject of the movie. And we're supposed to feel sorry for this SS guard who hand picked victims to go to Auschwitz? The Holocaust seems like something incidental to the story, a reminder of what happened, but less important than Michael's shame. There's even a scene where Hanna is moved to tears by a children's choir, raising that old and too facile question about how a culture with so much beauty could produce such evil.

The movie does have some good points. The family scenes with the boy are well drawn: cold and barren and spiteful. Kross is excellent. Kate Winslet is amazing in what is a rather limited role. But this movie is built on a flimsy foundation and certainly does not deserve a best picture nomination.

Rated R. 124 minutes. Stephen Daldry - Director, David Hare - Writer (screenplay), Bernhard Schlink - Writer (book "Der Vorleser"), Donna Gigliotti - Producer, Anthony Minghella - Producer, Redmond Morris - Producer, Sydney Pollack - Producer, Roger Deakins - Cinematographer, Chris Menges - Cinematographer, Nico Muhly - Composer, Brigitte Broch - Production Designer, Claire Simpson - Editor.

Principal actors: Ralph Fiennes, Kate Winslet, David Kross, Lena Olin, Bruno Gan, and Alexandra Maria Lara.