The Reader takes an odd, even perverse, path toward addressing the complicities that haunted Germany after the Holocaust. Based on the novel by Bernhard Schlink, the movie centers on 15-year-old Michael Berg (David Kross), who has a brief affair with a mysterious, much older woman (Kate Winslet). She suddenly disappears one day, only to cross his path years later when Michael, now a law student, observes a trial in which she is accused of murder as a former SS guard for the Nazis. It’s a problematic framing device to begin with, yet director Stephen Daldry only complicates things by treating the first half hour like a piece of Eurotrashy art porn. Segueing from that into the horrors of the concentration camps is a challenging transition that Daldry doesn’t quite know how to make.
