Reviewing Movies

What is lacking in this story is any background as to how Hannah came to be illiterate or what in her childhood caused her to be the frigid, emotionally detached, totally logical individual she became in later life.

In her relationship with Michael passion or love had no place, they experienced mutually rewarding needs and indulged them. For her part no emotional attachment was placed on them.

When her faithful employment record threatened advancement to a position that would have revealed her illiteracy her fear of the exposure lead her to seek other employment. She joined the SS to become a guard because the job did not require that she be capable of writing.

After she came to post-war trial her detached logical nature was interpreted as heartlessness and enthusiasm for her task. Rather than admit she couldn’t write when asked for a hand-writing sample she confessed to writing a report she obviously was incapable of having submitted. Revealing is the manner in which her co-accused jumped on the bandwagon and openly made her the scapegoat for their collective actions.

The reader centres on the future lawyer who, as a fifteen-year-old carries on an affair with a woman twice his age, who as a law student attends her Nazi War Crimes trial but fails to come forward with material information because he knows the condemned would not wish it made public. Who has not the courage to even confront her in prison then or even later in adulthood. Who rather continues reading books to her as he did that summer as a teen but now via tape. Who failed to attend his own father’s funeral but visits his mother to tell her of his divorce.