The READER in the Shadow of HOLOCAUST, Kate Winslet and Bengal Intelligentsia`s APPEAL for CHANGE

The READER in the Shadow of HOLOCAUST, Kate Winslet and Bengal Intelligentsia`s APPEAL for CHANGE

Indian Holocaust My father`s life and time - Nineteen

Palash Biswas

the nazi holocaust holocaust concentration camps holocaust death camps


Like the characters of the Hollywood Film The READER, we the people of South Asia, irrespective of Race, Caste, Religion, Clan and Nationality, have not come over the HOLOCAUST of Partition till this date. Generation after generation, we are PREDESTINED to live and die in the SHADOW of the HOLOCAUST never passing away, completely DEGENERATED! Completely SEGREGATED. We are predestined to live in Infinite Concentration Camps, Gas chambers and Death chambers while the WAR Criminals rule us with the INFAMOUS GESTAPO!

My friends often complain that I tend to be NON Academic and like the Ambedkarites and Maoists, I sound so LOUD, so EXTREMIST. Even the little mags as well as literary field and Journalistic ARENA DESPISE most!

But I may not help it.

This morning, my son steve was browsing TV Channels and discussing the SRILANKAN Crisis with an outlook comon in the Generation Next. They believe in the Official Information flow most ans immerse themselve into Virtual Reality.

I just could not help myself to say, `Look on the Tamil refugees, you may get your Grand father somewhere. Our people have been stranded in the GEOPOLITICS wide WAR ZONE suffered as the Tamils suffer in Srilanka. Our Women were Unsafe, Captured, converted and raped in lacs, Children STARVED in lacs and the People Died in lacs’!

Even this day, we are the Most DESETTLED people as a Nationwide Deportation Drive is launched by the ADWANI PRANAB BUDDHA AXIS! We have been DEPRIVED of CITIZENSHIP and we may IDENTIFY with the PALESTINE PEOPLE living in the CONTINUITY of HOLOCAUST!

Snadip Panday,the famous social activist, has written a STUNNING report in his news letter SACHHI MUCHHI that TWO HUNDRED and THIRTY EIGHT Families belonging to Eleven Districts around lucknow, living in a SLUM, near the river GOMATI, had been ousted as they are BRANDED as BANGLADESHI although non of them happens to be Bengali speaking! amongst these POOR People eighty Five families came from the adjoining district HARDOI where SANDIP and ARUNDHUTI are based! The DUO could not help them!

The URBAN SLUM DWELLERS, the SLUM DOGS are now being treated as SLUM DOGS!

I have been insisting in Interactions with FRIENDS all over the COUNTRY that this BLOODY CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT ACT and the TWIN TERROR Acts as well as AFPSA would soon break the limits of regions and Communities as these are going to be the BEST TOOOLS for EVICTION, DISPLACEMENT, DEPORTATION, PROMOTER BUILDER MNC RAJ and MANUSMRITI APARTHEID Rule. I had been correct, I always knew. But our friends, specially Social Activists, Intellectuals and Journalists had always been DETACHED as the VICTIMS were only the MUSLIMS, BENGALI DALIT Refugees and the ALIENATEd North East and kashmir People for whom the HOLOCAUST continues and the War Criminals are never tried!
The Crimininal executing all MASSACRES in West Bengal, GUJARAT, MUMBAI or elesewhere have never been TRIED as the NAZIES and FASCISTS had been. if tried, they got CLEAN CHIT!

No body even demanded JUSTICE for MARICHJHANPI Genocide!

The so called Mainstream, the CIVIL Society, the Intellegentsia or the Media have no SYMPATHY whatsoever for us the SLUM DOGS and the partition Victims still suffereing from the Partition holocaust!

Recent reports show that the the RESETTLED BENGALI Refugges in Dandakaranya are being BRANDED as MAOIST. Hitherto they were BRANDED as ILLEGAL BANGLADESHI INFILTERATORS! Where this DUAL IDENTITY would leave our people too, unfortunately this depends on the TRIIBLIS SATANIC Axis irrespective of ELECTORAL GOVERNMENT.

No POLITICAL Change may help us to RECOVER from the LONGEST POSSIBLE shadow of the HOLOCAUST!

The BENGALI INTELLIGENTSIA has signed a JOINT Statement APPEALING CHANGE in Bengal! the SIGNATORIES are:

Mahashweta Debi, TARUN SANYAL, Jaya Mitra, Sabyasachi Deb, Suchitra Bhattacharya, Amelendu Chakrabarti, Chaitali Chattopadhyaya, Partha PRATIM Kanzilal, Prasun Bhowmik,SOMON Mukhopaddhaya, Shyamal Bhattacharya, Aneek RUDRA, Sanjukta Bandopaddhyay, Anuradha Mahapatra, Abhijit Sengupta, Shambhu Rakshit, Jashodhara Roychowdhari, Abheek Majumdar, Shibasheesh Mukhopaddhyaya, Shubhro Chattopaddhyaya, Swati Chakrabarti, Shantanu Bandopaddhyaya, Sujoy SOME, Atanu Bannerjee, Subir Sarkar, Debashish Kundu, JOY GOSWAMI, Amal Dutt, Debbrato Bandopaddhyaya, SUNANDA SANYAL, Bolan Gangopaddhyaya, Rushit Sen, Kalyan Rudra, NABO DUTT, Mainak Biswas, Dr. Debpriya Mallik, Amiyo Chowdhari, Amiyo Dhar, Dilip Chakrabarti,Amitabh Chowdhari (Shri NIRAPEKSHA), APARNA SEN, Alokananda ROY, Manasi Sanyal, Bidipta Chakrabarti,BIRSA Dasgupta, SUMAN bandopaddhyaya, INDRANEEL Roychowdhari, RAJA MITRA, Raja Dasgupta, BIBHAS CHAKRABARTI, Kaushik Sen, Shayamal Chakrabarti, Manish Mitra, SUMON MUKHOPADDHYAYA, Gautam Mukhopaddhyaya, SOHINI Sengupta, Debashish Sengupta, Kakoli majumdar, Arpita Ghosh, BRATYA BASU, SHAONLI MITRA, SHUBHOPRASANNA, Shipra Bhattacharya, Samir AICH, Hiran Mitra, Sanatan Dinda, Chanchal Mukherjee, Arup Das, Amit Chakrabarti, SHAIBAL Mitra, Samiran Majumdar, Apu dasgupta, Dipankar Dutt, Asit Poddar, pradosh Pal, Shyamal Gaain, Aleek Das, Sujit Das, Abhijit Mitra, Dilip Samanta, Shantanu Dutt, Chayan Roy, Nikhil Bhowmik, Atish Pal, Rajshekhar Aich, Vijoy Chowdhari, GANESH HALUI,JOGEN CHOWDHAURI, MAMATA SHANKAR, Chandrodaya Ghosh, Sunetra Ghatak, SUPRIYO SEN, Vidyarthi Chatterjee, chtralekha Ghosh, Someshwar Bhowmik, Sumita samanta, Nilanjan Bhattacharya, Ranoo Ghosh, Pramod Gupta, Anamika Bandopaddhaya,Chiranjib Pal,Indrajeet das, Rajshree Mukhopaddhyaya, Gautam Chakrabarti, Barun Moitra, Ashim Chowdhari,, Partha burman, Nilotpal majumdar, DEVLEENA, Shaibal Bandopaddhyaya, Joy Basu, naveenand Sen,Ladlee Mukhopaddhaya, ANANYA CHATTOPADDHYAYA, Pratul Mukhopaddhaya, Anindo Chattopaddhyaya, Tapan Sinha, Asim GIRI, Amit Roy, Keya Chattopaddhyaya, sanhita Bandopaddhayaya, PALLAB KIRTONIA and NACHIKETA!

Well, we suppot this CALL just to have at least a DEMOCRAT FREE Environment in West Bengal to mobilise any SOCIAL Mobilisation for the LIBERATION of ABORIGINAL INDIGENOUS Minority Communities!
But the fact remain that none of these CELEBRATES would support our demands for EQUALITY, Liberty, OPPORTUNITY, EMPOWERMENT, JOB, Livelihood, Citizenship, Human and civil Rights and JUSTICE, an RESERVATION! They would never help us to recover from the Geopolitics WIDE Continuity of HOLOCAUST SHADOW!

They would not stand with us while we are DEPORTED! Massacred! DISCRIMINATED!

None of them have demanded JUSTICE for MARICHJHANPI Ethnic Cleansing for long Thirty years! They have not arranged any MASS CONVENTION on MARICHJHANPI!

They have never DEMANDED to stop the DEPORTATION, PERSECUTION and KILLING of DALIT REFUGEES all over INDIA!

What so?

We stand united with them as we want the ECZEMA must go!

We want to get RID of the HOLOCAUST SHADOW for GENERATION Next!

“The Reader” is a scrupulously tasteful — more on that word tasteful later — film about an erotic affair that turns to love. It is also, more obliquely, about the Holocaust and the generation of Germans who came of age after that catastrophe.

Directed by Stephen Daldry; written by David Hare, based on the book by Bernhard Schlink, translated by Carol Brown Janeway; directors of photography, Chris Menges and Roger Deakins; edited by Claire Simpson; music by Nico Muhly; production designer, Brigitte Broch; produced by Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, Donna Gigliotti and Redmond Morris; released by the Weinstein Company. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes.

WITH: Kate Winslet (Hanna Schmitz), Ralph Fiennes (Michael Berg), David Kross (Young Michael Berg), Lena Olin (Rose Mather/Ilana Mather) and Bruno Ganz (Professor Rohl).

The Guardian writes:

Much praise has been given to this adaptation by screenwriter David Hare and director Stephen Daldry of Bernhard Schlink’s 1995 novel Der Vorleser, or The Reader - the German title has the sense of “reader-aloud”. Everyone involved in this film is of the highest possible calibre, but their combined and formidable talents could not annul my queasiness that the question of Nazi war guilt and the death camps had been reimagined in terms of a middlebrow sentimental-erotic fantasy. This was, I admit, a problem I had with the original novel, and the movie treatment has not alleviated it. Its full, questionable nature emerges as the narrative unfolds; those fearful of spoilerism had better look away now.

The Reader Release: 2008 Countries: Rest of the world, USA Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 123 mins Directors: Stephen Daldry Cast: David Kross, Jeanette Hain, Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Susanne Lothar More on this film Kate Winslet gives a typically intelligent performance as Hanna, a sturdy, unprepossessing woman in a provincial town in 1950s West Germany; she is employed as a tram conductor. One rainy day, she chances upon Michael (David Kross), a teenage boy shivering, throwing up and almost delirious with undiagnosed fever in the courtyard of her apartment building. With brisk and motherly can-do, she mops his brow, sloshes away the sick with a bucket of water and makes sure he gets home all right. Some months later, after a lonely recuperation, he comes back to her flat with a bunch of flowers to say thank you. They end up having a glorious affair, and their passionate lovemaking is accompanied with a ritual hardly less erotic - she loves him to read aloud to her from the classics: Chekhov, Homer, Rilke.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/02/the-reader-kate-winslet-film



Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels announced a unilateral cease-fire Sunday, saying they will halt fighting to allow humanitarian workers into the war zone to help civilians.

The Sri Lankan government immediately rejected the offer. Sri Lanka is expressing appreciation for the offer of a humanitarian mission from the United Nations. But the government denies the international aid community’s assertion there is a humanitarian crisis. No one, however, disputes that many civilians remain trapped on the small piece of land in the northeast where the rebel Tamil Tigers are putting up a desperate last stand.Sri Lanka’s government and military say they are doing their utmost to minimize civilian casualties after cornering the remnants of the rebel force that once controlled a large swath of the north. The rebels appear on the verge of total defeat after a quarter-century violent quest to create an independent ethnic Tamil homeland.


Rebels in Sri Lanka claim some 150,000 people are on the brink of starvation in the territory held by the Tamil Tigers in the northeast. The Sri Lankan government says the rebels are to blame for the plight of the civilians in the remaining area controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The accusations come amid rising international concern over mass civilian suffering in the dwindling war zone.

On the other hand, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made an unannounced trip to Lebanon ahead of critical legislative elections there that could result in hard-line militants taking power.Clinton was scheduled to meet Sunday with Lebanese President Michel Sleiman during her brief stay in the capital, Beirut.In a written statement distributed to reporters, Clinton said the people of Lebanon must be able to choose their own representatives in open and fair elections, without the threat of intimidation or violence, and free of outside influence.

Former U.S. Iraq commander General David Petraeus said the latest bombings in Iraq underscore the need for vigilance to prevent the situation from deteriorating.Attacks by suicide bombers that have killed at least 140 people in the last two days, 185 so far in April, have caused renewed concern in the U.S. Congress, where General Petraeus testified to a House committee.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called on Pakistani leaders to do more to fight the Taliban, which he called a threat to the existence of democracy in the country. Speaking at a Marine Corps base in North Carolina Thursday, Gates also discussed the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.Secretary Gates was asked about the impact on the U.S. effort in Afghanistan of the Pakistani government’s agreement with militants in the Swat Valley and the Taliban move into the Buner district near the nation’s capital, Islamabad, this week.

“My hope is that there will be an increasing recognition on the part of the Pakistani government that the Taliban in Pakistan are in fact an existential threat to the democratic government of that country,” said Robert Gates. “I think that some of the leaders certainly understand that, but it is important that they not only recognize it but take the appropriate actions to deal with it.”

Gates’ comments came the day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused the Pakistani government of abdicating its authority to the Taliban by agreeing to impose Islamic law in Swat. Gates indicated that future U.S. relations with Pakistan depend, at least in part, on the government’s ability to take on the Taliban threat.

The Reader(Cert 15)

Philip French The Observer, Sunday 4 January 2009 Article historyThe Reader is an exemplary piece of filmmaking, superbly acted by Kate Winslet, David Kross and Ralph Fiennes, beautifully lit by two of Britain’s finest cinematographers (Roger Deakins and Chris Menges) and sensitively directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare. In certain ways they sharpen Bernard Schlink’s bestselling German novel of 1995 which deals with a subject - Nazi concentration camps and the Holocaust - that has hung over my generation since the outbreak of war in 1939, days after my sixth birthday.

The Reader Release: 2008 Countries: Rest of the world, USA Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 123 mins Directors: Stephen Daldry Cast: David Kross, Jeanette Hain, Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Susanne Lothar More on this film In 1940, we were made aware of the camps satirically by Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, and sombrely by the Boulting brothers’ film about the incarceration of the anti-Nazi cleric Martin Niemöller, Pastor Hall. Five years later newsreel from Belsen and Buchenwald showed us what went on inside those camps.

Since then, there has been an unending stream of Holocaust movies (nearly 300 are dealt with in the third edition of Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust, Annette Insdorf’s standard work on the subject), ranging in character and quality from scrupulous documentaries like Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog to, for me personally, the two most offensive, Liliana Cavani’s near-pornographic The Night Porter and Roberto Benigni’s sickly Oscar-winning Life is Beautiful.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/04/the-reader-review

Review: The Reader
by Jette Kernion Dec 12th 2008 // 3:02PM

Filed under: Drama, Independent, Theatrical Reviews, The Weinstein Co.

Opening in limited release this week with a wider release planned for January, The Reader has “prestigious arthouse drama” written all over it. It’s an adaptation of a critically acclaimed German novel by Bernhard Schlink, but translated into English for wider appeal, and features a big dramatic performance from Kate Winslet in which we see her character over the span of decades. It’s directed by Stephen Daldry and adapted by David Hare, who collaborated on another prestigious adaptation together, The Hours in 2002. This time, their movie explores German relationships that are affected, even decades later, by the Holocaust.

The movie is told as a flashback from the point of view of a middle-aged lawyer in Berlin, Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes). Back in the late 1950s, 15-year-old Michael (David Kross) falls ill on the way home from school one day, and is comforted and helped by a strange woman (Winslet). When he recuperates and returns to her home to thank her, a sexual spark flares up between them into an inappropriate but sympathetic relationship. They meet every afternoon, not just for sex but for reading — he starts by reading her the books assigned to him for school, but ends up finding all manner of literature for them to share. However, Hanna is full of secrets — she is even reluctant to tell Michael her name — and the effects of her past and her secret-keeping are long-reaching and dramatic.

The structure of The Reader is rambling and hard to follow — you think the movie is drawing to a close, and then you get 15 minutes more, making me feel impatient near the end of the two-hour film, as though there were too many endings. (I had the same problem with Changeling.) The frequent shifts in time — Michael in the present time of the film (1995), an extended chunk of the film during his teen years, another long flashback as a young man, and then shorter sequences that skip three years here and five there. The narrative arc isn’t quite clear enough for the movie to shift in this way without a slight sense of disorientation. It may be that the decision to keep the novel’s narrative structure impacted the film — I haven’t read it, but descriptions seem to indicate that the movie is fairly faithful to the events in the book.
http://www.cinematical.com/2008/12/12/review-the-reader/

The Reader (Der Vorleser) is a novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink. It was published in Germany in 1995 and in the United States (translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway) in 1997. It deals with the difficulties which subsequent generations have in comprehending the Holocaust; specifically, whether a sense of its origins and magnitude can be adequately conveyed solely through written and oral media. This question is increasingly at the center of Holocaust literature in the late 20th and early 21st century, as the victims and witnesses of the Holocaust die and its living memory begins to fade.

Schlink’s book was well received in his native country, and also in the United States, winning several awards. The novel was a departure from Schlink’s usual detective novels. It became the first German novel to top the New York Times bestseller list, and US television mogul Oprah Winfrey made it a selection of her book club in 1999. It has been translated into 37 languages and been included in the curricula of college-level courses in Holocaust literature and German language and German literature. A 2008 film adaptation directed by Stephen Daldry was well received.

The Reader is a 2008 drama film based on the 1995 German novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink. The film adaptation was written by David Hare and directed by Stephen Daldry. Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet star along with the young actor David Kross. It was the last film for producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, both of whom died before it was released. Production began in Germany in September 2007, and the film opened in limited release on 10 December 2008.



Meanwhile,Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa dismissed the rebel group’s announcement, saying the rebels are “running from” government forces and in a position where they are cornered and “must surrender.”

U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss told VOA the situation in Sri Lanka is the “toughest humanitarian crisis in the world at the moment.”

The U.N.’s top humanitarian official, John Holmes, is in Sri Lanka meeting with officials in Colombo. He is urging leaders to let aid workers take badly needed supplies to the tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the small strip of land still under rebel control in the northeast of the island.

The Tamil Tigers accuse the government of blocking food deliveries to the area under rebel control, and they say the civilians there are facing starvation.

Lakashman Hulugalle, director general, Media Center for National Security, points to location on map of remaining LTTE rebel-held territory
A Sri Lankan Defense Ministry spokesman Lakshman Hullugalle says the rebels are to blame, saying they have been stealing any aid the government has sent for civilians.

The spokesman estimated that between 200 to 300 rebel combatants remain in the war zone, and he said they could be vanquished instantly if not for the precautions government forces are taking to minimize civilian casualties.

The U.S. State Department has renewed its call for a cease-fire in the war zone, saying the safety of civilians and respecting international humanitarian law must be the foremost priority of both sides in the conflict.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s ruling party won an overwhelming majority in a local election. The win announced Sunday is seen as an endorsement of military victories against the separatist Tamil Tigers.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Freedom Alliance won 68 seats in the council of Western Province, which includes the capital, leaving 36 seats in the hands of opposition parties.

posting on a pro-rebel Web site, attributed to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, claims 150,000 civilians are on the brink of starvation.

Sri Lanka’s government says the civilians - it puts the number at no more than 10,000 - are hostages of the rebels, who claim the military is blocking desperately needed food.

The head of the Defense Ministry’s media center, Lakshman Hulugalle, tells VOA News it is the Tigers who are to blame for anyone starving on the northeastern coast.

Lakashman Hulugalle, director general, Media Center for National Security, points to location on map of remaining LTTE rebel-held territory
“What we have sent to those areas is not being distributed to the innocent people. It’s been robbed by LTTE. This is the only government in the world feeding terrorists and fighting against terrorists,” he said.

A United Nations spokesman tells VOA the world body has “no information about government food going in” recently to the affected area. It says at least 50,000 people are trapped by the fighting.

The Tamil Tigers have seen their territory shaved down to less than eight square kilometers amid a final offensive by the military.

Defense spokesman Hulugalle says the rebel remnants - he estimates at 200 to 300 combatants - could be instantly vanquished if not for the precautions government forces are taking to minimize civilian casualties.

“For the Sri Lanka government and for the forces it’s a matter of a few hours. If not for these innocent Tamils we should have crushed LTTE within hours,” he said.

The United Nations’ humanitarian chief, John Holmes, is to meet Sunday here with government officials. The United Nations says he will push for enhanced humanitarian missions in and around the conflict zone where access to the tens of thousands of displaced people is very limited.

The White House, in a statement, is calling on both sides to immediately cease fighting and allow civilians to exit the conflict area. It says aid organizations and journalists should have access to those refugees who have already escaped.

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Cast and CrewOpens: December 10, 2008
Executive Producer: Bob Weinstein
Executive Producer: Harvey Weinstein
Co-Executive Prod.: Jason Blum
Producer: Sydney Pollack
Producer: Scott Rudin
Producer: Redmond Morris
Producer: Anthony Minghella
Co-producer: Henning Molfenter
Co-producer: Charlie Woebcken
Associate producer: Michael Simon de Normier
Director: Stephen Daldry
Screen Writer: David Hare
Director of Photography: Roger Deakins
Director of Photography: Chris Menges
Editor: Claire Simpson
Line Producer: Arno Neubauer
Prod. Designer: Brigitte Broch
Art Director: Christian M. Goldbeck
Art Director: Erwin Prib
Set Decorator: Eva Stiebler
Costume Designer: Donna Maloney
Music: Nico Muhly
Casting director: Simone Bar
Casting director: Jina Jay
Cast: Ralph Fiennes (Michael Berg), Kate Winslet (Hanna Schmitz), Karoline Herfurth (Marthe), Bruno Ganz (Professor Rohl), Hannah Herzsprung (Julia), Jeanette Hain (Brigitte), Susanne Lothar (Carla Berg), Alissa Wilms (Emily Berg), Florian Bartholomai (Thomas Berg), Friederike Becht (Angela Berg), Matthias Habich (Peter Berg)
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Box Office:
Week of 04/19/2009
Pos.: 38 Gross: $55,229 Bottom Line: A love affair between a younger man and an older woman sharply reflects the conflicts between Germany’s war and postwar generations
During the making of “The Reader,” producers Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella passed away. This last film is a testament to the kind of productions each was associated with in his career — films of entertainment, often with stars, that also reach out in terms of situations, themes and settings to embrace larger issues that confront society.

“The Reader” is a well-told coming-of-age yarn about a young boy growing up in postwar West Germany and experiencing his first love affair. But the outreach is to an issue crucial in that country but also genuinely disturbing to any viewer. This is the troubling dilemma of Germany’s so-called “second generation,” which had to come to terms with the Nazi era and a Holocaust perpetuated by parents, teachers and even lovers.

Certainly “The Reader,” for all its erotic scenes involving Kate Winslet, presents a difficult marketing challenge. The lively, nonlinear structure imposed by screenwriter David Hare and tight, focused direction from Stephen Daldry make this an engaging period drama. But German postwar guilt is not the most winning subject matter for the holiday season. The film opens Dec. 10, expands Christmas Day and goes national Jan. 9.

“The Reader,” based on Bernhard Schlink’s controversial German novel, deliberately places a Holocaust perpetrator at the story’s focal point. But since we first meet her in an entirely different light, as a kind, loving and passionate woman, it explores the challenges of this second generation in navigating a welter of deeply psychological and morally complex issues.

The film opens in 1995 Berlin, where Ralph Fiennes plays aloof, emotionally numb attorney Michael Berg. We’re swiftly conveyed back to 1958, when his younger self (very well played by David Kross) has a chance encounter that will forever affect him. Coming down with what he later learns is scarlet fever, he is helped home by a stranger, Hanna (Winslet). Upon recovering, he looks her up to thank her and is startled to find himself losing his virginity to her. They embark on an affair with its own kind of feverish urgency.

As part of their bedroom rituals, he starts to read to her from books by Mark Twain, Homer and Anton Chekhov. She calls him “Kid” and clearly an “oldness” afflicts her beyond her years. Yet there is a kind of role reversal in his reading to her that allows him to expose her to worlds she never knew.

Then she disappears. Eight years later, as Michael attends a war crimes trial as a law student in Heidelberg, she makes a startling reappearance as a defendant. Michael is shaken to his core by growing evidence that his first love is, by any standard, a monster. But how does one deal with a monster who is a lover? One can only condemn her; but in that condemnation, where lies the process of understanding?

The film makes no attempt to answer this question if indeed there is an answer. There is an explanation, not immediately apparent, for why Hanna found herself in a position to dictate life or death. But there is neither an excuse nor an offer of atonement ready for her.

Neither Hare nor Daldry shows us any easy way to look at this character. They muddy the waters and complicate the emotions, but the facts of her actions smother any possible empathy.

What remains unclear, in the film at least, is why Michael has seemingly never thought about any of this before 1966. Did he never question his father — depicted here as a stern, unsympathetic man — about what he did during the war?

To Winslet and Kross belong the gutsy, intense performances of the film. Lena Olin as a unyielding camp survivor and Bruno Ganz as a sagacious law professor put in memorable appearances. Fiennes is solid as the elder Berg, but by this stage of life the “oldness” Hanna once exhibited has caught up with him too, making his a somewhat listless role.

Superior production work in Germany by top professionals led by two of the world’s finest cinematographers in Chris Menges and Roger Deakins gives what is a very tough story a fine professional polish.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/film-review-the-reader-1003917714.story