The Reader exploit’s a teenage boy, tries to convince me to sympathize with a Nazi, and receives 4 Golden Globe nominations. Go figure.

The Reader is the tragic and romantic love story of a young man, Michael Berg, who gets sick in an alleyway in post-WWII Germany. No wait, scratch that. The Reader is the story of literacy, shame, secrets, lies, Nazis, and statutory rape.

Back to our ill Michael, who is helped home by a stranger named Hanna, played capably, but not notably, by Kate Winslet. After recovering from his fever, Michael seeks out this woman in order to thank her. They soon fall into a passionate, but purely physical, relationship. Michael soon discovers that Hanna enjoys being read to, thus it becomes their new routine: Michael reads to Hanna, then they have sex. After a few months of this affair, Michael arrives at Hanna’s house one day to find that Hanna, and her belongings, are gone. Hanna’s disappearance leaves Michael’s young- roughly 15 year old-heart broken and confused. Cut to a few years later and we see Michael as a student of law who’s class project is to observe Nazi war-crime trials. Hanna becomes a part of Michael’s life again and her past is exposed as he watches her on trial, and eventually convicted to life in prison, for crimes committed while she served as a Nazi prison guard.

The film flashes between Michael then, played admirably by a young David Kross, and Michael now, played by an uncharacteristically unremarkable Ralph Fiennes. We see Michael struggle through every stage of his life with a deep secret never told, coming to terms with the history of his people, and his inability to “love” again. I use the word love very loosely here. A one point in their early relationship, Michael expresses his love to Hanna, and she returns the sentiment. I need to make it very clear that a teenage boy engaging in his fanatic need for sex is not love. And a roughly 30-something confused woman misinterpreting the attentions a young man pays her is not love. The movies greatest downfall was the attempt to label anything about Michael and Hanna’s relationship as love, in the proper sense of the word.

Essentially this film is about Michael’s secrets, Hanna’s secrets, and the consequences of the shame they feel that prevents them from revealing them. It’s about the German people struggling with a history that is all too fresh in their memory. It is about all of our struggles with the mistakes of our pasts, and the attempts to make them right in our presents. Unfortunately, the film tries to touch on all of these issues within a limited amount of time, and therefore only skims the surface of any of them; leaving the audience unsatisfied, unenlightened, and unimpressed.

If you’re literate, I would suggest trying out the book before you see the movie. And hey, if you’re illiterate, you can always try to find yourself a naïve teenager who will read it to you.