When a psychopathic murderer kills twenty women before finally being caught, we give thanks to God we never met that crazy while driving by ourselves on a Saturday night. When we read about a couple arrested for the abuse and imprisonment of children for nearly ten years, we lament how anyone could be such a monster. But when we learn that our favorite teacher abused her own children the entire time we knew her, our father cheated on our mother for the past eight years of their marriage, or our first love spent the years leading up to our romance as a guard in Auschwitz, often we simply don't know what to think at all.

And so begins the Post-WWII film The Reader. After falling ill on his way home from school, 15-year-old Michael Berg (David Kross) is helped by the significantly older Hana Schmidt (Kate Winslet). When he returns to her apartment months later to thank her for her kindness, the two embark on a passionate affair. During secretive afternoons together, Michael reads to Hana and the two make love. As days turn into months, Michael falls deeper and deeper in love, until one day Hana leaves without a word. To Michael, Hana becomes a mark on his life never to be seen again. That is until eight years later while attending law school, Michael encounters Hana as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial. The question is: Who then is Hana really, and what does that mean about the love she and Michael once shared, the truths that Michael has always believed, and the man that Michael has since become?

When Michael first sees Hana among the trial's defendants, it is as if his entire world has been shattered. As her involvement in the atrocities of WWII is painted before his eyes, his conflict only grows. He withdraws from his schoolwork and his classmates and takes up chain smoking. Even years later, as we gain brief glimpses into Michael's (now Ralph Fiennes) non-committal love life, failed marriage, and distant relationship with his daughter, we see that he still struggles with the mark Hana left on his life.

"I wanted simultaneously to understand Hanna's crime and to condemn it. But it was too terrible for that," says Michael. "When I tried to understand it, I had the feeling I was failing to condemn it as it must be condemned. When I condemned it as it must be condemned, there was no room for understanding." But as difficult a task as it is to understand how someone you love, someone just like you or me could be involved in something so terrible, The Reader is a story that seeks to at least try.

"Well, what would you have done?" Hana asks the judge when she finally admits her involvement in a specific incident in question. Not condescending or accusatory but rather honest, the question asks us to actually put ourselves in her place and ask if we still see another option. Underneath Hana's strong-willed personality, we soon begin to see a woman conditioned to hide weakness at all costs. Even as she admits to her actions as a prison guard, her determination to keep hidden another more personal secret reveals how deep that fear of imperfection goes. As she continues to confess, her admissions paint a picture of a Nazi fist that essentially denied all choice. And in light of the secret she still goes to great lengths to conceal, we see that even joining the SS in the first place, while an outwardly an act of free will, could have easily seemed like her only option. Does The Reader presume to excuse Hana's actions? No. Does it seek to absolve Hana of guilt? No. Does it seek to somehow lessen the wrongs inflicted during WWII by weaving into them valuable lessons? No. But in acknowledging that great wrongs are not only committed by history's villains but by neighbors, lovers, parents, teachers, and friends, the story addresses the often irreconcilable coexistence of good and evil, love and hate, and understanding and condemnation.

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