Character Motives in the Movie The Reader
How Ambiguity, Mystery & Suspense are Used to Keep Viewers' Interest
Mar 19, 2009
The action of The Reader (Stephen Daultry, 2008) opens with Michael (David Kross) in a sickly state becomes infatuation with Hanna (Kate Winslet), a woman twice his age who helped him to safety in his sickly state, and a May-December romance develops. In return for her sexual acts, Hanna asked Michael to read to him, and the sex/reading pattern develops.
After the passion-filled summer, Hanna leaves town without telling Michael. Both are reunited in a courtroom years later where Hanna faces counts of murder from the Holocaust and Michael is a law student.
Only one thing can save Hanna from a life in prison: his confession that she is illiterate, the one thing that she has hidden from the world her entire life.
The rest of the movie revolves around the tension of information given and information withheld, or mystery and suspense. The unseen character motives drive the movie forward, leaving viewers riveted, yet still longing for more information at the movie's close.
The Beginning Basic Plot Structure of The Reader
These unseen character complexities somehow keep the audience’s attention, probably better than if pieces of the characters’ histories had been revealed.
In the beginning, Michael’s hormone-driven naiveté is highly contrasted with Hanna’s earthy experience, but further into the movie, the characters are balanced through opposites: Michael’s understanding the gravity of what Hanna did during the Holocaust and Hanna’s lack of understanding and insistence of just doing what she was supposed to do, doing her job.
It is this inexplicable trust that leads Michael to withhold Hanna’s secret of illiteracy, though it could save her a prison sentence.
The Climax and Closing Basic Plot Structure of The Reader
After Hanna’s sentence and Michael beginning his own family, they remain in contact through a simple generous task of Michael: his reading to her through cassette tapes and her listening to them. It is through Michael’s cassettes that Hanna teaches herself to read, and it is through these cassettes that Michael remains eternally bound to his teenage lust-layered lover.
The book, however, provides a sharper sense of understanding through these scenes than the movie does. In the movie, Hanna learning to read is an emotional experience for viewers as they watch her reading the same books of romance and war that Michael once read to her, but readers of the novel see Hanna choosing books on the Holocaust, experiencing her rush of guilt and final comprehension of her past actions.
Another count for ambiguity on the movie’s behalf.
The Purpose of Ambiguity in Film
Occasionally, this leads to ambiguity onscreen as audiences fumble through their own confusion and the intentional confusion created by the filmmakers.
Ambiguity gets a bad reputation.
Sure a calculus professor’s ambiguity can be annoying as can ambiguity just for the sake of ambiguity, but when used in combination with mystery and suspense in theater, ambiguity becomes another tool of genius in evoking audience response. It is the balance of information and ambiguity that intrigues viewers to try to decode Michael’s and especially Hanna’s motives throughout the novel-based movie The Reader.
Why The Reader Leaves Viewers Thirsty for More Information
Throughout The Reader is a thirsty tension, both from the screen and from the audience, but in many ways, the audience is still parched by the time it leaves the theater. Though many movies that are based on books lose much ambiguity between the book to movie process, The Reader actually gains ambiguity somewhere along the way, leaving out explanatory scenes found in the book.
Even if the subtext isn’t up to par, the actions and choices of Hanna leave viewers in suspense alongside Michael as the film never truly answers the many questions of why, asking instead for viewers to plunge into the fragmented world through love, deception, and acceptance of all its splinters, even the cruelest of characters because of the unseen complexities that lie within them.
How the Characters of The Reader Change
An important question to ask after finishing any movie is how the characters changed throughout the course of the movie, positively or negatively, and The Reader is no exception.
Michael, though now grown with a family of his own, leaves us as a still-struggling man, especially struggling to share his feelings with others. He is in the process of breaking this struggle, however, as we watch him take his daughter to Hanna’s grave and begin to tell the story of Hanna that began so many years before.
By the end of the movie, Hanna has learned how to read, something she has wanted more than anything in her life. What is puzzling is when she is scheduled for release from prison and Michael sets her up an apartment, she commits suicide, this ever-complicated character remaining obscure even in her death.
Moviegoers Unable to Judge Characters of The Reader as well as Readers of The Reader
With so much kept from the movie, viewers cannot judge the characters as much, instead they must try to decipher why the characters act in the ways they do, creating a deeper level of connection to viewers and the characters they watch.
What moviegoers must remember is that film is a different medium than text with different goals. Though the movie’s themes differ form the novel’s, The Reader functions on its own accord as a movie of human complication, generation gaps, and acceptance of the fragmented, postwar world.
The ambiguity of the movie might leave viewers unsettled and disturbed, but the plot’s base is unsettled as are the characters. A happily-ever-after ending would be insulting to the complex characters woven with curious motives and pasts, even if these never become clear to viewers.
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