Movie The Reader

 The Reader dramatically narrates the interrupted relationship of a young Literature male student and a senior woman set in three periods: in 1958 when they first met, in 1966 eight years after and in their senior years in the mid-90s 29 years after the second passive encounter

Movie deals with illiteracy, sexual drive, the Holocaust, Nazi war crime, legal procedure, family, the past and secrecy

It is thought provoking, morally devastating, hurting

It all started by chance when Michael, a 15 year ago meets a pretty German bus conductor Hannah in her mid-30s discovering a common passion: Michael reading classic stories and poems, Hannah listening and sex

Two of the many books read were "The Odyssey" by Homer about a homecoming and "The Lady with Little Dog" by Anton Chekov, a classic short story

Michael selects the pieces and reads; Hanna simply listens and reacts

For reading to her, Michael is rewarded with sex

Hannah enjoys listening and learning, Michael as a literature students proficient in 3 languages loves selecting pieces and the reading

Michael's obsessions for Hanna starting with an affair to lust to love however came to a painful abrupt end for him

8 years later Michael as a law student sees her in court proceedings accused in a Nazi war crime resulting in the death of 300 Jews burned in a church

Michael was disturbed observing the legal procedure and was simply a passive observer not interacting with her

Secrets disclosed eventually unfolded when the two in due course connected in a non-traditional medium via recorded readings of literary works

Michael went through excruciating pain carrying the burden to himself:

• ·        As a young boy when the woman he fell in love with suddenly disappeared
• ·        Discovering her years later but with no contact and interaction
• ·        The woman he fell for is involved in a Nazi crime
• ·        An info he knew which can absolve accusations against her he withheld
• ·        A condition he learned later on which Hanna was ashamed to disclose
• ·        Secrets Michael kept to himself from his immediate family, his schoolmates, his wife and growing daughter
• ·        Never able to express how Hannah influenced him where he is now and mutually how Hannah learned skills because of him
• ·        The meet up that did not happen

The Reader shocks us with a powerful message that each one of us may have a dark past that we have to eventually deal with

How we deal with it may result in redemption, forgiveness, moving on or tragically deeper remorse and destruction

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"I reread the Odyssey at that time, which I had first read in school and remembered as a story of a homecoming.

But it is not a story of a homecoming.

How could the Greeks who knew that one never enters the same river twice, believe in homecoming?

Odysseus does not return home to stay, but to set off again.

The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile."

Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

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•Quotes from The Reader https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/23684-der-vorleser

•Reviews https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-reader-2008

•Trailer https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0976051/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

•Trailer https://youtu.be/Qc3HDorGzBc

•Film Summary https://youtu.be/G3nN7PDsBd0

Shown on TapMovies in HD of CignalTV