Michael Berg is a young boy living in Germany almost fifteen years after the end of WWII. While riding the tram home one day he finds himself getting sick and gets off and throws up in the alley. Coming to his aide is a 30 something woman who helps him out and gets him home in one piece to which he discovers he has scarlet fever. After three months in bed he finally gets the chance to visit the woman, Hannah (Kate Winslet), and much to Michael’s surprise she seduces him into an affair which runs the length of a summer. One of the things Hannah enjoys most is Michael reading to her before and/or after sex, and it becomes a source of enjoyment for both of them as the days pass. Years later, Michael is a law student and he signs up to be a part of a seminar that will observe a trial prosecuting alleged Nazi’s for their crimes during the war. When Michael gets to the trial he finds that one of the women on trial is a Hannah Schmitz, the same Hannah that he had spent a summer with, and she finds herself at risk of being handed possibly the harshest of punishment for the deaths of over 300 Jews during the war; for allowing them to burn in a church on a march from the abandoned Auschwitz camp in 1944.
This only gets you into the first third of the film or so, but I would hate to spoil the many turns this film takes all the way through the finish. Stephen Daldry has crafted another fantastic and brisk paced drama here as he did with The Hours. Though, I don’t hold this film as high as I do that one, it is one of the better pictures to actually stand out a bit in the end of the year releases in 08. The movie is also full of surprises and little twists along the way that will make you sit up and go, “oh,” and nothing is forced or stale for the sake of being shocking. The third act also could have easily strayed into the unbelievable in the nature of Michael’s deed, but everything is earned and feels genuine.
9/10
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