I had to watch The Reader in two sittings. After watching half the movie, I knew I must have missed someting, because the plot and the characters just didn't make sense. So I went through it again, this time to the end, and then I finally understood. I didn't get it wrong the first time, the movie's goal isn't to make sense. The goal for this abonimation is to disguise itself as a movie, before revealing that it's actually a bucket of human feces that desperately needs to empty itself over the viewer's head.
The story takes place in post-WWII Germany, and as it's a Hollywood production, the actors speak english with a german accent. That's never a good sign, and it quickly gets worse. The central character is a young boy named Michael who starts an affair with the substanstially older Hanna, who works as a tram conductor. The affair boils down to the two having lots of sex and Hannah asking Michael to read to her, and it gradually becomes appaerent that Hanna can't read, and that she's extremely ashamed by this.
The big plot twist occurs after Hanna mysteriously disappears, only to resurface in a court room, where it turns out she was a SS officer during the war, and that she let over 300 jewish women burn to death in a church. She defends this by simply stating that they were responsible for them, and that her squad wouldn't have been able to control them if they unlocked the doors. One could think that this would turn Michael against her, and make him question their relationship, but no - the guilt never becomes an issue and the latter part of the movie depicts Michael's attempts to strike up a friendship relation with Hanna while she's in prison. No serious questions about how or why she helped murder innocent people is ever asked, nor is the rest of the film a depiction of guilt struggling.
Not only is the treatment of the Holocaust as the moral equivalent of a speeding ticket offensive, the entire basis for the plot is downright questionable and sexist. Yes, sexist - because in a million years noone could convince me that the same retarded "Bohoo, my big terrible secret is that I can't read so I can't be held morally responsible for my actions" crap could have worked for a male. The plot requires you to view the female sex as weaker, unintelligent and unable to control their own actions. Not convinced? Try a sure-fire way when you have that nagging feeling that something isn't quite right: switch the sexes. Now you have a close-to-40 year old nazi pedophile - a direct participant in the holocaust and personally responsible for 300 people burning to death, who's screwing a 15-year-old girl and telling her to read aloud to him. Yeah, that movie will never be made.
In fact, there are only three types of people who should be able to enjoy The Reader: Nazi pedophiles who can identify themselves with Hanna, people who haven't seen enough of Kate Winslet's naked body, and finally people who are so shallow and ignorant that they actually buy this crap without giving so much as a passing thought to the fact that people are responsible for their own actions.
