How often these days do you see a movie that sends you out into the night engaged in heated conversation and debate?  That’s the rare pleasure and achievement of The Reader, one of the most haunting and thought-provoking films of recent years.  Bernhard Schlink’s novel scored an enormous success around the world, but it also stirred controversy by presenting a former concentration camp guard in a complex, at times sympathetic light.  The same controversy will surely be generated by Kate Winslet’s astonishing performance in the movie version adapted by David Hare and directed by Stephen Daldry.

Winslet plays Hanna Schmitz, and in the opening section of the movie, set in 1958, she is a tram conductor who comes to the aid of a teenage boy, Michael Berg (David Kross), who becomes violently ill on the street.  The two begin a clandestine love affair that has a far greater impact on Michael than it does on Hanna.  She remains secretive about her past, and one day she simply disappears, leaving Michael desolate.  He sees her again a decade later when he is a law student, and she is on trial for war crimes.  There he learns of her job as an SS guard who sent female prisoners to their deaths.  But when she is falsely implicated as the ringleader of the guards, Michael has to make a moral choice not dissimilar to the choice that Hanna and her fellow guards made during the war.  Michael realizes he has information that might exculpate Hanna of the most serious charges brought against her, but shocked by what he has learned during the trial, he is reluctant to act on her behalf, and his silence condemns Hanna.

There are multiple reasons why Michael chooses to remain silent: shame and fear, as well as genuine outrage over Hanna’s past.  But we cannot help comparing him to the Germans who remained passive during the war and refused to take a stand against the evil around them.  His inertia is not unrelated to the apathy of his parents’ generation, the silent majority who simply closed their eyes to the Holocaust.  Through all of these scenes, a profound sense of moral concern enriches the searing drama of The Reader.  As Hanna gradually begins to feel the remorse that she refused to express during the trial, Michael also begins to acknowledge his concern for her.  Yet a climactic scene offers a whole other perspective on guilt and reconciliation.  When the older Michael (now played by Ralph Fiennes) visits a camp survivor (Lena Olin) whose testimony helped to condemn Hanna, he finds a proud, strong-willed woman who refuses to grant the forgiveness that he seeks.  The film sees all the characters in the round.  This open-ended inquiry respects the audience’s intelligence and allows us to come to our own conclusions.

The performances enhance the film’s complexity.  Winslet captures Hanna’s authoritarian, exploitative personality as well as her stirrings of conscience and shame.  Newcomer David Kross does a remarkable job of illuminating Michael’s agony.  And Lena Olin scores a brilliant coup with her two brief but memorable scenes.  The one disappointment is the performance of Ralph Fiennes as the adult Michael.  Fiennes has always seemed to me a technically proficient but somewhat cold, bloodless actor.  Because Fiennes holds back, the ending doesn’t quite achieve the emotional catharsis that we’re anticipating.  Still, The Reader is a thoughtful, beautifully crafted film that reverberates in our memory long after the lights come on.