Plot Summary - Well done drama about a teenager who has an affair with an older woman with a dark secret and the life-long effects this affair has the man's psyche. In 1958 Germany, fifteen-year old Michael (David Kross) is ill on the streets where he is helped by a thirty-something woman named Hanna (Kate Winslet). Struck by her, he recovers and seeks her out - and so begins an affair despite their twenty-year age difference and seemingly different social and educational levels. Rushing to see her after school, their affair is driven not just by sex and baths but by her desire to be read to by him - all the classic novels. One day she has disappeared and he doesn't see her again - until SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT: forward to 1966 where Michael is a young law student who is taking a special seminar and attends a trial in which - surprise - Hanna, once an SS guard during the Holocaust, is being prosecuted for war crimes!
Review - I found this film an intriguing watch, quite romantic and passionate in the first half, and leading into the Holocaust part of the story which comes as somewhat of a surprise (at least if you know nothing of the film's plot, which is what I try to do by keeping away from film reviews and clips until after I've seen the movie). I did question a couple of things that these characters do in this film (SPOILER SPOILER: 1. why he doesn't speak up about her illiteracy during the trial, 2. why she "gives up" on herself at the end of the film), which came across as unrealistic to me. But, in any case, I did really enjoy this and found it to be an excellent and memorable film. Kate Winslet is great, as usual, as is Ralph Fiennes who appears as the grown-up man version of Michael - but I must say, actor David Kross, who plays young Michael is fantastic in this, why no Oscar nod?! Rating - 10/10 stars
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment