(2008) Secrecy is one of the great themes of literature when characters or the author withholds information. Looking out from his window at a passing train in Berlin in 1995, Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) imagines seeing himself on another train in Neustadt, Germany, of 1958.

In the rain and sick, young Michael (David Kross) is befriended by a woman, who sees him to his home. Three months later, recovered from scarlet fever, he returns with a bouquet of flowers to thank the woman. Thus begins a passionate love affair ("Mount my bed and mix in the magic work of love" - Homer in The Odyssey) between a virgin 15-year-old boy and Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet in a role for which she richly deserved both the Golden Globe and Oscar), twenty years older.

Asked about his studies in school, Michael speaks in Latin and Greek to Hanna and then reads to her from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's German play, Emilia Galotti: "Nothing but work," says the Prince, "The people actually envy us." Enthralled by the sound of his voice and the words from the pages of books, she sets the terms for their love making: first he must read to her. However, when he reads from D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover, she says it's "disgusting."

Stopping at a church on a two-day cycling trip together (during which she's mistaken for his mother), she's deeply moved listening to a children's choir. Nico Muhly wrote the ethereal music for director Stephen Daldry's powerful, haunting film, exploring the questions of justice and morality, adapted to the screen by David Hare from Bernhard Schlink's novel, Der Vorleser.

Offered a promotion to an office position from her job as tram conductor, Hanna suddenly vanishes rather than admit her handicap, leaving Michael ("Only one thing can make a soul complete, and that is love") distraught. Years later as a judge and divorced father, Michael ("The man of twists and turns" - Homer) tells his daughter Julia, a young woman: "I'm not open with anyone."

In 1966 in Heidelberg, as a law student in Professor Rohl's seminar, Michael attends the trial of several former Nazi SS female guards who were at Auschwitz. Murder requires intent, says Prof Rohl (Bruno Ganz) to his students: The court must ask was it wrong legally what these women did, not was it morally abominable.

When queried repeatedly about her participation in the selection process of female prisoners, Hanna asks the judge: "Well, what would you have done?" Another student during discussion of the trial can see no point in trying to distinguish degrees of responsibility ("Everyone knew!") among the defendants: "Shoot them all!"

Two survivors, Ilana and her daughter Hana Mather (Lena Olin), who have written a book about their ordeal in the death camp, describe for the court how on the death march in the winter of 1944 they with the other Jewish women and children prisoners were locked inside a church that caught fire ("… to the house of death. But they held fast in place, hoping that others might still come" - Homer), killing all 300 (except themselves).

"Why did you not unlock the doors?" asks the judge of Hanna, whose reply indicates she chose to let them die rather than escape. Hanna appears more ashamed of her illiteracy than of murdering Jews; Michael becomes ashamed of having known her, withholding information that could mitigate her punishment.

After nearly two decades of her life sentence in prison when he (her only contact from the outside world) asks if she has given deep thought to her past, she tells him: "The dead are still dead…. I've learned to read."

Disappointed in her apparent refusal to express any remorse or regret for the depredations of her past, Michael bars the doors of her personal prison, denying her an outlet, with her heart aflame. The film further keeps hidden any explanation or hint as to why Hanna is completely alone as an adult and as a child never learned to read.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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