The Reader tries to be a metaphor for how the post-WWII German generation struggles to come to terms with the tainted past of the previous generation, but it sure has a funny way of going about it.

In order to create the bond that a postwar teenager, Michael Berg (David Kross), has with older woman Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), a contemporary of the Nazi reign, the story has them fall in love during a wild summer affair. She makes him read literature to her as foreplay, but the tryst is short-lived as Hanna ends things and disappears suddenly.

A few years later, Michael is a law student and, as part of a class, attends the trial of a group of women who served as concentration camp guards. Lo and behold, one of them is Hanna. Naturally, Michael is quite conflicted. Although the movie tries its best to have us identify with Michael's state of mind, it does a much better job making Hanna sympathetic -- she is not only  eye-pleasing (she is mostly clothes-free for the beginning of the movie) but also has an authority about her, conveying both human strengths and weaknesses, with one weakness being particularly crippling. Winslet, who despite utilizing a funny German accent is still able to make Hanna a believable being.

Meanwhile, Michael wrings his hands, grows up to be Ralph Fiennes, and still wrings his hands -- his prolonged indecisiveness and inaction become tiresome, and his eventual main good deed, though affecting, is still too conspicuously tempered by the story's concern for balancing the fight between its protagonist's love and scorn.

The Reader's presentation as a prestige picture tries to act as a shortcut to viewer stimulus -- it's somber, well-acted, literary, and adult -- but it's also stifling. It tries for depth while holding your hand and glossing its surface; in the end, you get what you'd expect, which is a decent Holocaust-related drama, and not much more. (Capsule review)

(Released by The Weinstein Company and rated "R" for some scenes of sexuality and nudity.)

Review also posted at www.windowtothemovies.com