thereader

Watch The Reader.

It's preferable that you go into without knowing anything about it. The jist is this: A young boy has an affair with a much older woman when he's in his youth. The woman leaves one day and he doesn't see her for a long period of his life until one day he finds her again, and is in a position where he alone has the power to change her life.

At the beginning of the film, don't be disturbed too much by the senseless, gratuitous nudity. Kate Winslet has no shame (we have learned this from Titanic) and basically walks around without a top for the majority of the film. Once you're able to get past this, the film delves into some pretty substantial subject matter.

Two general themes encountered are law & morality, as well as language & linguistics. Here is the interplay where word can equate to life or death, where responsibility is but a plaything to be trifled with, where the word "the" can be the beginning and the end. This is where books can fill you with emotion, yet by simply standing upon them words can be beneath you. This is the point where society chooses right and wrong, and right can sometimes be wrong and wrong can sometimes be right. Here the paths blur, choices become ambiguous, decisions aren't delineated.

What is the price of one life? Is it the truths of 300, or the lies of 6? Is it at the hands of responsibility, or in the arms of the moral compass? Can we admit our greatest fears when we are forced to choose, can we speak up when everyone is against us, when all hands point towards death as certain, inevitable, just? What is justice?

When is saving a life more important than moral standards?