The Reader Differences Between Book And Movie

The Reader, set in post-World War II Germany, relates the story of an SS camp guard, Hanna Schmitz, and her evolving relationship with the narrator, Michael Berg. Both the book and the movie deal with serious issues, including love and denial, guilt and accountability, and reconciliation. They both employ several subversive strategies: in presenting Michael Berg’s first love, it is impossible not to be sympathetic; we are drawn in. Hanna is the mysterious older woman who initiates the young boy into the mysteries. All is made even more mysterious by the way in which she seems to exist behind a veil of distance, as if she has something to hide. Although she hides her secrets well, there is search for truth and reconciliation through their love
Despite glossy production values and well-known, talented performers, the film never allows itself to properly breathe, lest it be accused of showing too much sympathy for a Nazi matron, who is victimizer but also part victim. Lacking the capacity to work through the issue, the movie forces its characters to dance on the head of a pin and maneuver between being human and non-human. Winslet tries her best, but Fiennes is morose and lifeless. More importantly, the movie falters artistically in part because its characters undertake the impossible, to shoulder personally the blame for German fascism. The effort to shove the various personae into this structure must bend them out of all recognizable
During the death march from the camp, the guards locked their prisoners in a village church for the night. Later that night the church was bombed and set on fire. The women inside were killed when the guards failed to unlock the doors. There were just two survivors, a mother and a daughter, who testify for the prosecution. In a deposition before trial, which Hanna signed, she admitted to having the key to the church. Furthermore, her gilt cannot be accepted even after the fact that she taught herself how to read and write, but the atrocities that she did should be realized from humane side of herself not after the fact that once she became literate it was the time for her to realize what she