Movie: The Reader
The Reader
It’s tonally perfect all the way through. It is rarely obtuse and obvious, yet I think felt every emotion the movie wanted me to feel and I considered every connection the movie wanted me to consider.
The story is about a teenage boy who has a summer romance with an older woman. Later on, he finds out two very remarkable secrets about her and her past.
It’s hard to discuss the wonderful paralleling the film does between the boy’s choices, the woman’s choices as a younger person, and our entire society’s choices without being specific about the secrets.
I will simply urge movie lovers to watch this one if you haven’t already. As I’ve said before, every moment within it is practically perfect in doing what it needs to do. Yet the film achieves all this without obvious effort.
I think watchers will figure out the second secret. I think watchers will guess the eventual resolution of the two main characters. But I think we know these things because the movie leads us to them.
It leads us not with duh moments but with the quiet intuition that steals upon you so silently that you know for sure that you just encountered truth.
Kate Winslet has such sterling moments within this piece. I rather wish she had more screen time so I could fully back her lead actress Oscar win though.
Perhaps I’m not remembering correctly but it seemed to me that there was a large middle portion of the movie during which she did not appear.
Still, as I continue to push through last year’s Academy Award nominees, it’s hard to think that there’s a better film than The Reader out there.
How I would rate last year’s Best Picture nominees:
Actress in a Leading Role
- Meryl Streep in Doubt
- Kate Winslet in The Reader
- Melissa Leo in Frozen River
- Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married
- Angelina Jolie in Changeling