Stars: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Bruno Ganz

Summary: Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.

Review & Reflection: 

After watching the The Graduate and Y Tu Mama Tambien I was reflecting further films that deal with sexual awakening and the traditional depiction of the younger man and older woman.

The Reader is not a film that is solely about the sexual awaken of a young boy, it is a deeper study of truth and reconciliation, and how the younger German generation dealt with the wartime crimes of the Nazi government. Presented in 2 half the first half is a happy schoolboy fantasy jaunt, where young relatively quiet boy embarks on an intense sexual relationship with an older woman. Michael and Hanna and shown happy and seemingly overcoming the age gap. The 2nd half of the film deals with the sadness, mainly from the realisation for Michael of Hanna past; but also in his realisation that she is willing to accept judgement labelling as a war criminal to hide the in her eyes that she is illiterate.

However, on closer reflection how much of a jaunt is the earlier part of the film, Michael is 15 when we engage in the intense sexual relationship with Hanna, and because it is boy with a very attractive woman (played by Kate Winslet) we are seeing The Graduate – not that this is child abuse. There is a double standard in society when it comes to this area if the film had a have been about the seeming consensual relationship between and a 15year old girl would the society have been so accepting of it.  I Have described the first half as a fantasy jaunt, I was a 15-year-old once and would have loved to have been in the same situation. There is no real traditional signs of abuse as in conversion, there are time at the beginning were Hanna appears to be using Michael, but the generally the relationship seems happy but it is intense something that is hard for the hormonal teenage brain to deal with and when couple this with the sudden abrupt ending of te relationship when Hanna vanishes Michael is scared.

As I have said I was 15 once and on my initial watching I was pleased for Michael but on rewatching the scars of this relationship are clear to see, he is distant from all around him, he has a relationship with a much younger woman (girl?) which appears to almost be exclusively sexual – has he, in turn, turned into Hanna? His emotional development has never moved from the self-centered gratification of his 15-year-old self (Adams). Maybe because of her illiteracy Hanna herself was not very emotional or intellectually developed and that explains her running away and not facing up to her illiteracy, perhaps but we should not look on it as an excuse.

It is clear through film like this that Hollywood and film culture, in general, has a dual standard in how the sexual awakening of boys and girls are depicted.

Biblograghy

Adams, T. (2017). Reading Between the Lines in The Reader : When is Abuse Not Abuse?. [online] The Huffington Post. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thelma-adams/reading-between-the-lines_b_147631.html [Accessed 11 Apr. 2017].