I saw the movie, The Reader, in one of the last days of 2008.

It seemed to me a bit spoiled. The same director (Stephen Daldry) who
had made The Hours, based on Michael Cunningham's novel. That movie
was well made (inferior to the book, though).

Here, in The Reader, something was kind of missing. Hardly to say what.

Two extraordinary actors. Kate Winslet as Hanna: she found the perfect
key for such a difficult role. It is an extraordinary achievement to
render the same personage, behaving each time the same, each time on a
totally different plan.

Each plan is made perfectly credible by Kate Winslet, while she
remains always the same Hanna.

Then the kid, the fifteen years old boy. A young German actor (David
Kross), who played superbly his erotic awakening, a male who's more
and more proud and sure of himself, while remaining actually a kid.
Just amazing, how this young actor could maintain the duo with Kate
Winslet without being overwhelmed by her.

Ralph Fiennes did not convince me, to be honest. Maybe I'm wrong, I
would understand his creation better at a second watch.

Immediately I started to look for the book, Der Vorleser, by Bernhard
Schlink. I found it the same evening and I didn't leave it from hands
up to the last page. I read it again, after that: as I didn't want to
leave the story from myself.

What makes it so impressive, this novel? It's presented as largely
autobiographic, and it is really written with passion, as the author
wanted to get finally free of his obsessions. Of course, it is
impossible to get the real autobiographical elements, and, after all,
once a book is written it becomes a fiction: it is about its own
universe, different from the universe of the author.

What is this book about? Is it mainly about Hanna, the woman who had
become an SS criminal because she was trying to cover her illiteracy?

Well, no. It is mainly about him, about The Reader, Der Vorleser (the
German language is here more exact: The One Who Reads Aloud, more
precisely The One Who Reads Aloud To Be Listened). He is the main
character, the book is about his reactions toward Hanna. It is about
him discovering through Hanna his erotic awakening, then about him
discovering the secret of Hanna (her illiteracy), and so, through
Hanna, discovering the banality of evil.

Let's make here a short break: it is a book about the problematic of
the Holocaust; what makes it original is maybe not the fact that Hanna
is not a victim but a perpetrator; what makes it a great book is that
it speaks forcefully about the banality of evil. Hanna did not commit
her crimes because she was hating Jews, or because she was believing
in any of Nazi ideas; she was simply trying to cover her illiteracy
and any other aspect was unimportant for her. As simple as that!

But this is not the only greatness. There is another one,
overwhelming: his coming to terms with Hanna.

You see, a complex of love/hate/guilt is crossing the whole story,
from the beginning to the end. He loves Hanna, he hates her, as he is
horrified by the evil. So love/hate, while the guilt, I mean his
guilt, is ever present. At the beginning an unclear Freudian complex,
at the trial the guilt that he loves a criminal, in the end the guilt
that he cannot stand firmly on her side!

The solution the hero finds in himself, to read aloud book after book
and to send the cassettes to the prison, to be listened there by
Hanna, this is really overwhelming: someone could be a horrible
criminal, but she or he remains a human being and keeps always the
right for human dignity. Someone could be a horrible criminal but she
or he remains a human being, and a human being is fragile; so she or
he always needs someone else to protect this fragility.