Past and present collide in The Reader

The Reader is one of those end-of-the-year prestige pictures with serious Oscar aspirations. It has a serious topic (Holocaust guilt), a serious thespian (Kate Winslet, intense as always), some serious button-pushing (a sex affair between a grown woman and a 15-year-old boy), and serious time-warping (it bounces between four decades, with the opportunity for old-age makeup).Still, I'd be surprised if the Academy Awards are in its future. The film never quite becomes as devastating or moving as it would like. Adapted by Stephen Daldry (who made the much more blah The Hours and the much more lively Billy Elliott), it's a bit remote and workmanlike - there's a lot to cover here, and the strain sometimes shows.But The Reader develops some power as it moves across the decades, enmeshing us in several plot lines that all lead back to one emotion: guilt. If you like this kind of prestige picture, it's smart enough and subtle enough to be worth a shot.Based on an Oprah Book Club novel by German author Bernhard Schlink, it begins in 1958 West Germany, where 15-year-old Michael (David Kross) has an affair with a woman in her 30s (Winslet), who collects fares on the train. Daldry presents the affair frankly; the two spend a lot of time nude together, especially as she orders him to begin reading literature to her, as emotional connection, as foreplay.And it isn't until their third time together that he finds out her name - it's Hanna - though she prefers to call him "Kid." Their affair is based on mutual need: Michael (played with grave humor by Kross) is more than happy to discover what sex is, while Hanna is obviously a needy, troubled woman.We don't find out why that is, though, until Michael, who's grown to become a cigarette-smoking, intense law student, encouters Hanna again. He's on a class assignment. She's on trial, for reasons you can discover on your own.The story twists effectively here, gaining some power that was lacking during the sex-and-reading part. Guilt is a galvanizing force, and grows to fill the film: There's Germany's guilt, Hanna's guilt, Michael's guilt as a young man, and Michael's guilt as a middle-aged man (Ralph Fiennes, who's subtle and even wrenching).The Reader finds some space there though, for some measure of redemption, where a small act of kindness can begin to fill a couple of empty lives. Such acts won't save the world, the story acknowledges, but it's a start.2 hours, 3 minutes. R. Lots of nudity, sex.

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