ccman2 While this movie seems odd because the plot occurred in 3 different stages, it's really well done. It takes all of the social taboo's of the 1900's along with the cultural affects from World War II and pieces them all together in this awesome film with the character of Michael who had an affair with Hannah, a woman nearly twice his age as a young teenager and while we may forget things like that as a teenager, she's thrown right back in his life some years later as a college law student who he must defend her while she's on trial for her actions partaken with the German Nazi regime efforts. This movie is intense, exciting, and arousing in a very original plot. This movie really gives a perspective of how detrimental the consequences of life decisions can be.

NoPantsBatman The director Stephen Daldry brings to life The Reader, a romance between a teenage boy, Michael Berg (David Kross), and an older woman, Kate Winslet (Hanna Schmitz). It's filled with hard emotions, love, drama and a touch of sexuality.The story goes along the years 1965 and 1995, where Michael is played by two actors, David Kross as young Michael and Ralph Fiennes and adult Michael. In these 124 minutes, we get to see the first love of young Michael, the difficulties a teenager goes through when dealing and understanding someone from the opposite sex, especially an older woman. We also get to see the enthusiasm, anxiety and passion that this first love makes him feel, like nothing else in the world mattered, only her.I went through a roller coaster of emotions throughout the movie. I felt in love, devastated, afraid, pity. A lot of things (good, but mostly bad) happened between Michael and Hanna during the years, but, somehow, a little flame of love and caring remained untouchable, even if they did not show it to one another. In a way, it made me feel like I was watching a fairy tale surrounded by a horrifying reality, waiting to see prince charming saving the damsel in distress.The music throughout the movie was on point. Right moment, right time, right tune and right tone. Really helped intensify the emotions I was feeling, as well as guide them on the correct path.A captivating love story, kept me glued to the screen from start to finish, with a lot of details to enjoy and feelings to feel. A great work, a great watch, a great time. 8 out of 10.

Shambala_Elephant I hate spoilers, and so I'll avoid revealing too much. The movie is beautifully filmed and acted, and perhaps due to that acting, the character of Hannah Schmitz draws our sympathy despite....Well, she commits more than one act that some viewers find unforgivable. But for all the intensity in the love affair that consumes the first hour of the film, the movie isn't merely about the passion between Michael and Hannah, and while it is partly a coming of age story, it is also about how the two halves of the movie interpenetrate each other, just as the young Michael's rigid, very serious home life counterpoints his more joyful life at school and the past cross pollinates with the present.The second half of the movie, bridged to the first by Michael's enrollment in law school and more conventional coming-of-age experiences that begin to form him into the adult he will become--or WOULD were it not for the reentry of Hannah into his life these eight years later--communicates in flashbacks and images parallel to the first half while alluding to events that happen when Michael is an infant.Perhaps a couple of turning points in the plot are unnecessarily confusing in that twice Hannah receives a promotion at work that she refuses, albeit for a crucial thematic reason: she leaves her factory job with Siemans to work as a guard then (though revealed first in the movie) leaves her job as a tram ticket-taker to go who knows where until, eight years later, she resurfaces in the courtroom. When she has her affair with Michael she is living in the Siemans building--employee housing, I guess. Suffice to say that Siemans was her main employer before and after her tenure as a guard. At any rate, for those who know the basic historical time-line and watch the dates as they appear on the screen, these changes won't be so confusing. In the same vein, Lena Olin plays both the once young survivor who grows up to write the memoir that will expose Hannah AND, 20 years later, her NYC daughter. Giving the movie the benefit of the doubt, we can say that one of its themes is the ineluctability of the past and the quest for closure to it.Like others, I think the chemistry between Hannah/Kate and Michael/David Kross is special, and it might make all the difference in how we receive their relationship. However, some viewers will see her less as 'human' and more as anti-social, debauched, while seeing the older Michael as damaged, but that may not lessen for them the film's impact.

yogendraxp A boy and A woman meet out of life's routine chaos. Its as if life brought them together for a purpose. Boy fulfills his sexual fantasies and also gets mother like love from the woman. While the woman gets a companion that she always needed, for cheer n for forgetting her pains. The story is of happiness till here. Then life moves on. They part. After a few years meet again at a trial. Boy comes to know that the women is convicted for crime but she did all that in ignorance as she could not read n write. Here SHAME is the problem. Because of the shame she can't admit that she is illiterate n save herself. Because of shame the boy cant admit his love and care for the women. she spends 20 years in prison. She is learning to read n boy helps her out by sending audio tapes of his reading. But all these years they don't meet n never express love. Before her release from jail they meet. The meeting is very much dry with formalities talk. She is depressed with the meeting. the guilt about the wrongs that she did in past amplifies further because of lack of love from her lover and she hangs herself. In short...Excess guilt, excess shame lead to self destructive behavior. Guilt, shame killed something that was so beautiful, so divine between two peopleThe movie is very well done. the actors, scenes everything is fine. some "very realistic acting" you can almost live in it!!!