Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

At its core, THE READER is about a German woman named Hanna (Kate Winslet) attempting to live a less-than-ordinary life in the post-World War II time of rebuilding. The problem is that during the war she lived a life that made her a very visible figure in a place where her face and her duties will never be forgotten. Hanna was one of several prison guards tending to females interned at Auschwitz, and she was often called upon to select who lived and who died. These facts are never in question in this loaded drama that will test your capacity to care about someone who may or may not have carried out her orders with compassion or sadistic joy. One young man knows a secret about Hanna that would answer this question and set her fate one way or another.

From director Stephen Daldry (THE HOURS), screenwriter/celebrated playwright David hare (PLENTY; THE VERTICAL HOUR), and based on the novel by Bernhard Schlink comes this sometimes emotionally clunky but ultimately powerfully realized tale that begins with a 15-year-old Michael Berg (David Kross) meeting Hanna, a streetcar ticket taker, when he becomes ill on the street and she helps him home. After recovering from his long illness, Michael finds Hanna to thank her, and the two almost inexplicably begin a summer-long and very naked affair. The only "kink" Hanna introduces into their days together is she likes to hear David read to her from classic literature, such as Huckleberry Finn, The Odyssey and even Lady Chatterley's Lover, which Hanna finds disgusting but insists that he keep reading. They almost always meet at her small apartment, and as tawdry as the whole business is, it also contains a real sweetness to it. Then Hanna vanishes suddenly, and Michael is left crushed.

Jumping ahead eight years, Michael is now a law student whose class is sitting in on the trials of possible Nazi war criminals. The case he is observing regards a handful of female prison guards, including Hanna, who the other guards attempt to portray as the leader of the group and the instigator of some truly awful acts. In a plot twist that is not nearly as implausible as it might seem, Michael realizes that a fact he has only come to realize about Hanna could prove that these other women are lying. Perhaps because he doesn't want to shame Hanna or maybe just because his broken heart still hasn't healed, he says nothing.

Without getting too much deeper into the plot of THE READER, I'll add that Ralph Fiennes also appears in the film as the middle-aged Michael remembering the events and attempting to overcome his guilty feelings by helping a now-elderly Hanna still in prison. One of the film's most riveting performances comes from Lena Olin in a dual role as both an elderly woman who survived Auschwitz and remembers Hanna all too well, and her grown daughter whom Fiennes approaches for a favor years after the trial.

I hope I'm not making THE READER sounds more complicated than it is. It's actually an elegantly streamlined story of a man who never really got over his first love. That summer shaped and guided the rest of his life, for better or worse, and in the end he attempts to do right by his conscience and by the woman who taught him how to give himself over to a person completely. The film has its flaws, and perhaps answers some questions a little too definitively when they might have best been left fuzzy and unresolved. But the guiding light of THE READER is Winslet's guarded and somewhat cold performance as a woman who clearly needs love and affection in her life even if it opens her up to exposure to both emotion and physical injury. I'll admit, her stance as the dominant force in their love-making made images of ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS dance through my mind (oh baby), but Winslet is incapable of putting in a bad performance even when the material doesn't quite match her level of perfection (in totally unrelated news, see my review of REVOLUTIONARY ROAD next week). Though I struggled with some aspects of THE READER, ultimately I found it an enlightened and profoundly strong work.

-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com