The Reader—Catharsis seeking
What’s The Reader about? Before I saw this moive, I have already known the content of the story. It is Dominique, a close foreign friend and student, told me. Another ironic life.
The background about this movie is based on the Second World War and mostly the post Second World War. Not like the other World War films, The Reader has its own form. At the beginning, a love story is taken as the opening. 15 years old boy, Michael falls in love with a woman named Hanna roughly 20 years older than him. Love takes the most part of his life in that summer. He couldn’t stop loving her, he couldn’t live without her for a single minute. They make a deal that reading to her before making love. ”The Odessey”, “Huck Finn” and “The Lady with the Little Dog”. Michael discovers that Hanna loves being read to and their physical relationship deepens. But one day she mysteriously disappears and Michael is left confused and heartbroken.
The moment when they meet each other again is at the Nazi war crimes to sentence Hanna, the guard of the camps during the war. She commits all the sins what she did in the camps which shocks Michael totally. There is a secret kept in both of Hanna and Michael’s hearts. Finnally, Michael does not discover the secret, the one Hanna keeps forever. For me, the reason why they do that is they choose to follow their hearts, to be honest to themselves. It’s cruel! No way to avoid the result of being honest to your life if you have already decided to follow your heart. Hanna spends the rest of her life in the prison until she suicides herself. During the prison time, Michael sends the reading tapes to her, all the tapes from what he read and she listened when they had affairs in that summer. Hanna who can’t read starts to learn to write and read. Hanna did her job and followed all the principals of her position in the camps except reading and writing the reports where she signed her name many times to kill the Jewish women and kids.
”Camps are not the therapy for you, go to literature.” Michael’s seeking catharsis might be ended when he tells all the story to his daughter.
Posted on July 18th, 2009 at 7:09 am
Make your first post, but it is not published. I am writing the second. It’s me, the African tourist.
Posted on July 21st, 2009 at 7:37 am
Julia, sorry for that!
Just at the strating of this weblog. Now your two comments are published. Tks so much for your visiting from Africa!