Film Review The Reader

5:17p.m., Sun 4 Jan 2009

Films are not novels. Film is often the most sparse way of telling a story whereas a novel can sprawl over decades, centuries even, with as much detail as it sees fit. Thus, translating a novel into a screenplay is all about compression. And so, with The Reader there's two main problems to tackle. Firstly, the whole story hangs on details, details which, in the novel are easily lost amidst the pages. Secondly, there's the passing of time - the lead character, played here by Kate Winslet, is portrayed as a woman in her thirties, then her forties, and finally in her sixties.

The question of the details, the significance of which only develops as the threads of the story are pulled together, is handled deftly. I should admit that I'd read the book before seeing the film and I was worried that crucial character traits would be over-emphasised too early, heavily sign-posted and fore-shadowed to an obvious extent. But that's not the case, the two central characters are built slowly in lingering, nervous scenes.

The question of the story spanning forty years or so is less delicately handled. The central character is played by two different actors: Ralph Fiennes in present day and David Kross as the 17 year old version. This is fine, but present-day Kate Winslet just looks ridiculous, looking like French & Saunders in those sketches where they latex up and play at being fat old, leery men. Sadly, Winslet's portrayal of the older version of her character is only as convincing as her make-up. It's a half-arsed attempt all round and it requires the viewer to turn a blind eye.

Another problem is the accents. The film, after all, is largely set in Germany. But all the dialogue is in English, requiring the actors to adopt a ridiculous accent. Fienne's character speaks English in the latter part of the film - signified by the adoption of slightly softer accent than when he's supposed to be speaking German. The whole thing feels like a straight-faced episode of 'Allo 'Allo.

The book is an incredible story though, and the compression of the screenplay has been been handled well. So, despite all it's flaws, The Reader manages to be an entertaining and engaging 2 hours of cinema.