DVD reviews - May 25: The Reader; Seven Pounds

May 24 2009

The Reader **** (15)

Based on Bernhard Schlink's novel, The Reader deals with weighty issues of shame and guilt centred on Germany's part in the Holocaust.

We see a tortured, divorced, emotionally constrained and successful lawyer Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) looking back through his life as the film is told in flashback form.

We meet Michael at 15, played superbly by David Kross, who during a chance meeting encounters 36-year-old tram conductress

Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet). The relationship develops, he falls in love, she teaches him about sex, he reads to her. Then she disappears.

He meets her again in 1966 when he is a law student and Hanna and other Auschwitz guards are on trial. Hanna cuts an austere, cold and unrepentant figure on trial and does little to clear her name, as she is hiding another shame - that of illiteracy. Michael, unaware before, suddenly realises this. He is the only one who knows this secret and it could assuage her guilt.

But he does nothing and her fate is sealed as she asks the uncomfortable court brusquely: "What would you do?" It was a job and she did it.

The next section of the film sees Fiennes wrestling with his feelings but sending packages of tapes and reading books to Hanna in prison where her happiness is evident and touching and she teaches herself to write.

Winslet puts in an excellent performance as the complex character of Hanna and the film manages to convey the themes of Schlink's book. The film is weighty, sad, chilling and, like the book, stays with you for ages afterwards. Avril Cadden

SEVEN POUNDS **** (12)

Will Smith seems to have succeeded in reinventing himself as a serious actor.

Yes, we will always associate him with the carefree fools of Men In Black and Bad Boys but with

The Pursuit Of Happyness, and now with Seven Pounds, Smith has demonstrated that he can carry a heavyweight drama with just as much ease.

In Seven Pounds he plays Ben Thomas, who is struggling with his conscience after a tragedy and sets out to help seven strangers in an effort to redeem himself.

It's hard to say much more without spoiling the story, so just get your hands on this film if you fancy a change from Friday night no-brainers..