Directed by: Steven Daldry
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Kate Winslet
Rating: R

Kate Winslet and David Kross star in The Reader. (Courtesy photo)

Something is missing at the core of The Reader—a somber, morally wrenching story in need of a stronger point of view. We see a lot of shots of the conflicted faces of the characters, but in this case we really need their thoughts voiced. How rare that characters in a movie don’t say enough. Based on the best-seller by German author and lawyer Bernhard Schlink, The Reader was adapted for the screen by playwright David Hare and directed by Stephen Daldry—apparently the go-to team for Oprah Book Club heavyweights. (They also collaborated on The Hours.) The Reader is an artfully mounted film, with the astounding camera team of Chris Menges (The Mission) and Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men). With Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes in the leads, there are a lot of award-winners going around. But it’s kind of like the Yankees’ starting lineup: a bunch of all-stars doesn’t guarantee team chemistry. The Reader is fairly compelling and very well acted. But when the pedigree is this high, so rise the expectations. Young Michael Berg (David Kross) falls into a relationship with 35-year-old Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) in 1958 Heidelberg. Each day he sneaks to her apartment. She bathes him, he reads to her, they make love. To the intelligent, withdrawn Michael, it becomes the defining event of his life. After a few months she disappears, leaving him utterly distraught. Six years later, Michael is a law student in Berlin. He attends the court case of six female Auschwitz guards, and is horrified to discover the main defendant is Hanna Schmitz. She and the other guards have been accused of allowing 300 prisoners to die in a church fire.

We also spend time in 1995, Michael having grown up into Ralph Fiennes. The film is structured so that we expect the catharsis to come in this section. The final act of The Reader plays as relatively restrained and honest, but it doesn’t supply catharsis. Such a bright light is shone on the moral ambiguities of Hanna’s actions, yet they still pale in comparison to the act. It’s easy to be taken by another great Winslet performance, but it’s harder to respect Michael’s inner conflict. And since he doesn’t finally articulate it, we’re left feeling strangely detached from the events.

It’s not for a lack of good performances. Winslet is front and center, a fierce and fiercely guarded woman who seems to have no sense of her own beauty, of how she might emotionally affect a boy less than half her age. Just as good is young David Kross, utterly convincing as a boy besotted by the unglamorous Hanna. It isn’t easy to watch, as Hanna is unwilling or unable to expose her feelings to Michael. Fiennes is good too, though he has little more to do than look haunted and miserable. And this pinpoints a problem: we get no sense of lives lived between the periods shown. Michael and Hanna get reduced to servants of theme, not whole people.

Stephen Daldry made a sweet, energetic debut with Billy Elliot (2000). His next project was the screen version of The Hours, a movie I found to be fairly insufferable in spite of a collection of powerful performances. The Reader is much better, in part because Daldry has more significant material on which to apply his heavy hand. It’s great to ask hard questions. The hardest part of all is coming up with an answer. The answer can be subjective, inconclusive, incendiary. But a point of view needs to be supplied when internal conflict is the tool of the drama. Humanizing a participant in the holocaust is compelling. But it’s not enough. Winslet and Kross make the film more than worth a look. But in spite of the Academy’s recent proclamations, The Reader is hardly one of the five best films of the year.

Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, California. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard residents for many years.