The Reader‘s opening scene is not positive. Michael learns that Hanna was a guard involved in a forced march of 300 women and children, almost all of whom perished in a church fire when the guards refused to unlock the doors.Īs a young law student and later as an adult, Michael is forced to confront not only his own secret past, but the shame and guilt of a country trying to come to terms with its horrific misdeeds-symbolized by the stoic, taciturn woman who had pilfered Michael’s innocence.
#THE READER NUDE SCENE TRIAL#
Michael and some peers are invited by a professor to attend a war crimes trial of several low-level Nazi SS guards. Hanna vanishes without explanation, leaving her teenage paramour-who has confessed his love for her-devastated … and utterly scarred. Chekhov’s story, “The Lady With the Little Dog.”Īnd then, as quickly as it began, their affair ends. She asks one thing of him: that he read to her. The woman, 36-year-old Hanna Schmitz, is equal parts stern and sensual as she reveals all of her body but none of her soul to a boy who quickly grows addicted to their regular rendezvous. And she seduces him, beginning a summer-long affair that will shape the rest of his life. When young Michael Berg returns to thank the woman after recovering from scarlet fever months later, he inadvertently catches a glimpse of her changing clothes … and he runs away. A woman getting off her workday shift on a trolley takes pity on him and washes his face. The boy’s rust-red cheeks signal he’s unwell. A 15-year-old boy clutches his overcoat as he walks along a cobbled street.
0 kommentar(er)
