Character mistake: During the seminar, Professor Rohl tells students that only 19 workers of Auschwitz were sentenced (in 1966). During the first trial of Nazis from Auschwitz, 39 were sentenced, including 23 persons condemned to death. The trial was in 1947 in Krakow.
The Reader (2008)
Directed by: Stephen Daldry
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Kate Winslet, Bruno Ganz, David Kross, Jeanette Hain
Visible crew/equipment: When Michael is on the train you can see a crew member's face reflected on the glass window of the train.
Continuity mistake: In the beginning, when Michael Berg is sick on the street in Neustadt and is leaning on a wall to throw up, he's near a closed door and is positioned to the right of that door. Next shot, from inside, shows the door now open and he is leaning to the left part of the door. (00:03:15)
Michael: I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, it will give it spice. I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you ended it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love.
Hanna Schmitz: You don't have the power to upset me. You don't matter enough to upset me.
Hanna Schmitz: It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what I feel. The dead are still dead.
Question: When Michael & Hannah begin their affair Michael is 15 years old - in the courtroom scenes, the judge states that Hannah is now 43 years old and also states that the events at Auschwitz took place 20 years prior, which would've made her 23 at the time of Auschwitz and possibly around 23 when she left Michael - meaning that when they had the affair she was only about 7 years his senior. Therefore, when she's 43 in court, that makes him 36 years old when he's at university watching the court proceedings - but surely that's too old for what the film is trying to portray? It seems like he's in his 20's when he's at uni. I don't get it. Surely they couldn't have gotten their timelines so incorrect?
Chosen answer: Where do you figure she was 23 when she left Michael? She had been working at the dispatch office for several years before she meet Michael (as indicated in the scene where her boss promotes her for her long service) -- so this is years after she was at Auschwitz. So she was in her mid-30s when she began the one-year affair with 15-year-old Michael. Then, while at university about 8 years later (when she is in her early 40s), he attends her trial. The timeline is fine.
Question: When Hannah has her back to the camera, as she fills the bath, naked, we can see about 3-4 red long to medium scars/wounds. Is there any reason for these scars/wounds?
Answer: Those weren't scars. They were very superficial marks like she'd scratched her back.
Chosen answer: She was apparently brutalized while she was at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Question: At the trial, first, we are told that all the women died in the church, but then a woman survived - we are not told how - and she appears to be quite old; then we are told that her granddaughter wrote the book about it. Was the granddaughter in the church, as well, and survived somehow? I'm confused.
Chosen answer: There were two survivors: a woman and her daughter, who was named Ilana. It was Ilana's memoirs of her and her mother's experience in the camp that were published. Ilana, the daughter, may have helped with the actual writing based on her mother's memories (since Ilana's own memories could be bleak, as she was just a child).
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Answer: It is confusing in the movie because it seems like she went from the ticket taking job to the SS job after refusing the office job promotion, which would require literacy. When actually her SS job was prior to the ticket taker job. Was muddled in the movie.