I have to disagree with Stephanie Zacharek's review of "The Reader" -- she does not seem to understand the subtlety of this movie. "Where is the passion"? That's the point. Winslet's character doesn't have any passion. She has been depleted by her past and is unable to be human. And, of course, the Ralph Fiennes character is another victim of her inhumaness. I found the acting riveting.

Stephanie,

I thought The Hours was very interesting, so much so that I went back

and saw it a second time, which I rarely do. Perhaps if you'd read

Mrs Dalloway, you wouldn't have "hated" the movie.

Maybe these films are intended for readers, rather than film critics.

I was a bit put off by Zacharek's review but I'm glad you made up for it. Your explanation of the supposed lack of "passion" makes a lot of sense and I'll remember that when I see the preview tonight (won tickets, yay!).

I'm glad Kate Winslet’s nudity was in the lead-in (I still can’t believe people take their clothes off in movies—Winslet is so scandalous). I’m sure the US/STAR-like reveal of that information is also so very relevant to the film; or, just maybe, Winslet’s nudity has more to do with the character she is portraying than a personal attempt to titillate. Secrets and nudity don’t always have to equal passion (I took a shower today and I haven’t told my colleagues that I plan to take Monday off). Nakedness symbolizes more than a physical state. It depends on how the story is using it, and of course context.

Kate Winslet is an extremely charming, sensual, and attractive woman. One can appreciate both her acting, and her nude form on many levels (who doesn’t like to see her act and/or be naked?). But this is not the first film that she has appeared au-naturel (when is she not naked in a film?). But she always makes the decision to disrobe based on script, plot, role, etc. In short, she does it for the art. I’m not saying everything she has done is art, but when was the last time an art critic led with “Art Model Strips off her clothes…”

Then they're failures as films.

And how do you know the critic hasn't read Mrs. Dalloway? Me-OW!

Ms Zacharek does her duty as a critic but I inferred a real animus to tragedy in her review that almost seemed to be fear of it. Say what you will about "Titanic" and this film, little suspension of critical faculties is necessary to allow a shudder at the former movie's depiction of humanity's grand and fatal hubris and in "The Reader" a depiction of damage to personality that led two individuals to abort their emotional lives. Fiennes flatness is appropriate to his experiences with stunted affection at home and with his first romance, and Hanna...well, one might infer a cauldron of pain in her past.

"But this is not the first film that she has appeared au-naturel (when is she not naked in a film?)."

I don't recall her being naked in "Sense and Sensibility" or "Finding Neverland". Not that I would have objected to it, you understand.

Ever since seeing Winslet in her first movie--Peter Jackson's underrated Heavenly Creatures (in which she also did not appear naked)--I've never seen a performance of hers I've disliked. She is a true artist, always pushing the envelope and taking different kinds of roles.

The thing about Winslet's nude scenes is not so much that she's very attractive, but that she has a woman's body, not a stick's. She actually allows herself to have curves. That is becoming unfortunately ever rarer in Hollywood these days.

Spot on. Of course, Zacharek is too much of a sexist to see the boy as a victim. Reverse the sexes and she'd be thrashing around like an epileptic seal.

"is like one of those handsome, slipcased editions of a classic that looks great on your bookshelf, even though you never feel the remotest desire to take it down."

I bought it for some reason, and found the same was true of the book. There wasn't a lot of passion there. I kept waiting for something to happen. It's told in a very emotionally repressed way.

So maybe it's hard to inject passion into something that is lacking passion to begin with.

I agree with mother, grandmother...

If Ms. Zacharek had read the book, she would see that the boy is another one of Hannah's victims. She treats him just like the concentration camp "favorites" she used used to have, which she also had read to her. Until she let them go on to their deaths when the relationship became a burden for her. The boy finds out she used to do this (surely that did not help him feel better about the relationship). Hannah is not at all a sympathetic character in my view. She may be plagued by guilt and, in a way, she is punishing herself by denying herself real human contact (or passion). But she was quite aware of what she was doing in the concentration camp -- and chose that rather than admitting her "shameful secret."

The boy is just a boy of course. And like any child seduced by an adult, the relationship has great potential for being harmful to the child, who has little control (the power differential being a issue). What does it say about Hannah that she chooses a child to have a sexual relationship with and makes him read to her?

She is at best ambiguous if not something darker and Winslet must be commended for taking on such a difficult character. Zacharek's reaction to the movie makes me wonder how well the movie succeeds in communicating all this -- after all we are getting praise of a sexually liberated woman, not my view of what is going on at all.

Anyway, there's my 2 cents.

A spoiler alert would have been nice.

I haven't read the book yet... now, I wonder if I need to.