Talk:The Reader (2008 film)

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 January 2021 and 29 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Yupthatsmethx (article contribs).

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 January 2021 and 29 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Yupthatsmethx.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:09, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Functional illiteracy?

I don't think that the movie gives any information on whether Hanna is a functional illiterate or a "strict" illiterate. The only scene where there might be any hint on her known letters or words is the "learning in prison" scene where she learns the "the" word. But she might be using a "words first" approach to self learning to read: she doesn't have any more information on grammar other than there are pauses between words. Some actual literacy teaching methodologies use a words and syllabs first approach (I think the construtivist approach would be similar). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.102.10.28 (talk) 02:12, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of the distinction; the book doesn't really make it and the movie, less so. The point that matters is that she can't read written text and so she cops to having written the report on the barn-burning massacre when, in all likelihood, she didn't. Daniel Case (talk) 19:48, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

No paradox in the second paragraph

The second paragraph refers to a paradox (Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past, a secret that — paradoxically enough — could help her at the trial.). I don't see how that's a paradox. There might be an arguement for irony. I removed the reference and cleaned up the sentence.

"Paradoxically" and "ironically" are really words to avoid, so you did the right thing. Irony or paradox are for the reader to see and understand from the facts. Daniel Case (talk) 15:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

However, by taking out that phrase, you end up with "Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past which could help her at the trial", which makes it sound like her Nazi past could help her at the trial. How about "Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past - a secret which, if revealed, could help her at the trial." Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 16:13, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Done. That works. Daniel Case (talk) 18:43, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Request deleting the "Reception" section

I suggest the replacement of the "Reception" section added by other colleagues. It is just a colection of subjective newspaper opinions that you can find about any movie really. I don't know why in case of this movie, we need all these elaborate word for word quotations from the press just to water down the movie at the date of its release. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, and not a collection of personal opinions that we post. However I am reluctant to replace it for now, without an amount of discussion on this at least and a consencus of what to do with this sectionwerldwayd (talk) 16:12, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Most film articles generally try to sum up the movie's critical reception (by critics at major media outlets in the US and UK, anyway). But there is perhaps too much quoting in this one. Daniel Case (talk) 06:20, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure how else one could form a "Reception" section in a different way. Film critics are in a better position to comment on a film, so their opinions are pretty relevant. I think that the trickiest task is to provide the right balance of opinions about the film. The best way to do this is to find retrospective coverage about how a film was received (the later, the better). Like Daniel said, we could cut back on the quoting, but I think that the benefit of such a section is that it allows us to show critics' analysis of a given film. —Erik (talk • contrib) 06:33, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

It seems surprising to me that four out of five reviews single out the film's treatment of the holocaust for specific criticism, and all are negative to some extent. This does get a bit sam-ey. Maybe Bernhard Schlink feels the need to defend himself. cojoco (talk) 12:04, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

That's a great essay. I'll have to add some material about it to the article on the book. Daniel Case (talk) 16:16, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I just want to point out that a movie's reception at the release will be very interesting to read about as the years pass by. Memories tend to change and events tend to shift meaning as new facts shed light on the past. What's seen as a classic today might not have been well received at the beginning, and vice versa. I think all articles about all creative arts (literature, drama, movies, music) should have a Reception section. Even if it may seem banal today, It most certainly will be of interest for latter generation. -- Henriok (talk) 01:53, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if these examples are actually representative of the film's reception at the time. It is possible that the film struck a nerve among some editors, and they sought out negative commehts to insert into the article. If there is a very good reliable source which discuss the film's reception, I think that this would be better than the current hand-picked selection of comments. cojoco (talk) 09:02, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Generally, the idea behind a reception section is that you quote the reviews in major publications and/or by notable critics. You don't need to quote them all if there's a broad consensus (however, if one high-profile critic differs with that, s/he ought to be quoted). I think that's generally what I was trying to represent.

Rosenbaum's essay is perhaps the most strongly representative of the criticism of the film's treatment of the Holocaust, in a major online publication and by an author who's written about that subject. Adams is an important critic too and she has the most succinct criticism of the way the movie depicts Michael and Hanna's relationship. Daniel Case (talk) 14:54, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I think such a section is a reasonable one for a film recent enough to have a range of accessible reviews. What concerns me here is that three reviews, all very strongly negative, are quoted, and no positive reviews at all. This, on the face of it, seems to me a NPOV violation. Either no reviews should be quoted, or one generally positive and one generally negative, I would suggest. Clevelander96 (talk) 23:20, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Production

I have added information about producer Scott Rudin who left the film during the post production.Sha-Sanio (talk) 18:32, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Timelines

Kate Winslet joined the cast in January 2008 - Filming began the following September - filming wrapped up the following July. That would make it July 2009 when filming finished then? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.167.213.128 (talk) 12:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Good catch. Thanks. Copy has been fixed to match sources.
Jim Dunning | talk 14:23, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete page completely

I feel that this page needs to be deleted completely since it is only acting as an redirect to "The_Reader_(2008_Film)". That page now contains all details about that movie. User:Brianbowie (talk) 11:09am, 18 January 2010 (GMT+2) —Preceding undated comment added 09:11, 18 January 2010 (UTC).

March 10, 2009 edit

This edit, wich I have twice reverted, falls far afoul of WP:OVERLINK, specifically "avoid linking terms whose meaning can be understood by most readers of the English Wikipedia, including plain English words, the names of major geographic features and locations, religions, languages, common professions, common units of measurement, and dates". Redundant information was also added (in an article about a film set in Germany, I doubt most readers will need to be informed that the German capital city is intended when Berlin is used (note that that link takes you straight to the article about that city rather than the disambiguation page). There is thus no need for even one link to the US dollar page, for example, or words like "blog" and "Jews".

I would also point to an MOS violation in breaking off the lede sentence as a stand-alone.

There were some worthwhile changes made, such as converting all the ISO 8601 dates to normal ones and flagging some uncited claims. But on the whole the edit basically put the baby in dirty water, so to speak.

I reverted the anon who made the changes. S/He reverted back, calling a wholesale undo "out of order". After reverting again, I am taking up their request to take it up here. Daniel Case (talk) 17:09, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The revert is a bit wholesale. First, I did some re-formatting of the infobox and links in the lead sentence. Secondly, the "Plot" section has too many overlinks in either diff. A third point for now -- I think it is better for the dates to be written in full because they are more immediately readable; no mental translation is involved. Erik (talk) 17:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

That's what I meant by reverting the ISO 8601 dates as a good thing. Daniel Case (talk) 19:34, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

"Reception" section

I've flagged this section as POV.

The film has won and been nominated for numerous high-profile awards, including Oscar and Golden Globe wins for Kate Winslet.

The Rotten Tomatoes website shows 61% of critics giving it positive reviews. [1] Not as overwhelmingly positive as some films to be sure, but definitely a significant majority of reviews have been positive.

And yet this section gives far more focus to the negative reviews, giving three of them extensive indented quotations...but no such extensive or indented quotes from any positive reviews. There's very little coverage of the positive reviews at all, and much of it seems more luke-warm than truly positive.

So it seems clear that the negative reviews have been given undue emphasis here. It's all fine and good to show both sides and present the opinions of those who liked and disliked the film, but the negative opinions here have been given very undue weight, and this creates a misleading impression of how this film was received. By any objective measure, the reception was more positive than negative. Helvetica (talk) 09:18, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Two points in response.

• Apart from whether critics liked the film or not, there were two controversial issues with the film that were addressed outside of the film's artistic merits, and by people other than film critics: the suggestion that Hanna was being excused for her role in the Holocaust due to her illiteracy, and the ephebophilia issue. IMO these are notable enough to be discussed there; perhaps they should be in separate sections.

• When that year's Oscar noms came out, the partisans of The Dark Knight, unhappy that it had not been nominated, seized on The Reader as an example of a film that, they felt, had not received similar notice to that film yet was nominated instead of it (see here). That may be a legacy of that. Daniel Case (talk) 22:31, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree the section is unbalanced and the reviews illustrated contain mostly negative content and some sort of revision needs to be made. Some of the selected reviews also draw a little too much attention to the Holocaust in the film. This could cause the plot to be misinterpreted or appear confusing. For the people who didn't understand the movie, the Holocaust/war crimes trial was the sort of plot twist or "character twist" mechanic in the movie and not the main focus. Also as a reminder, this is a romance film not a historical documentary. --Rent A Troop (talk) 00:40, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, but any movie that involves the Holocaust somehow winds up being a Holocaust movie whether it wants to be or not. Daniel Case (talk) 03:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I added a positive quote from the Washington Post. I removed words like "very" and "highly" from phrases like "very critical" and "highly critical." I removed one negative description by us completely but left in the quote from the critic. The section is still unwieldy. Part of it is too many long quotes. I added a long quote, but only to keep up with the Joneses, not because I wanted to particularly. Plus, the negative long quotes are scathing and dramatic, almost in an attempt to match the film's drama. The critics are taking issue as much with the subject matter of the film (which came from the book) as with the dramatization of that subject matter. How can you do a movie that talks about a sexual relationship between a 36-year-old and a 15-year-old without offending people who believe it's immoral? I think the content needs to be cut back (he says who added more). However, cutting back, in its editorial judgment, also evinces a point of view.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:01, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't even know what to make of this section, if its POV or not. Must take the movie for what it is, a science fiction cocoon wrapped around a politically correct issue of illiteracy excusing the horror of mass murder somewhere in the center. Some critics equate morality with literacy, and others milk sympathy for mass murderers just because they were illiterate and couldn't read Homer's Odyssey. (1943 literacy rate in Nazi Germany was close to 99% among 20 year olds.) Think of this movie taking place in an alternate dimension ('reboot' is the popular catchword of the day), where members of the elite SS couldn't read or write and never heard of Wagner or Bach either. Meishern (talk) 14:53, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Premiere

We say it opened on December 10, 2008, but don't say where specifically.

David Kross says: The world premiere was at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York on December 3, 2008. Who's right? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 10:58, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Nationality

Given that the director was British, the screenplay writer was British, two of the three main actors were British, one of the two producers was British, the editor was British, the cinematographers were both British and a fair proportion of the backstage screw was British, it seems odd that the film's reported 'nationality' is German-American. Who decides which bits of input determine the nationality of a film? I don't see why films, and especially films of this kind, should be claimed by or attributed to nations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.12.209 (talk) 00:56, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, it was American money that funded the production, and it was made (mostly) in Germany with German actors in the supporting roles. I think at one point we had it as "British-German-American", which I honestly think is as accurate as it gets.

While I see your point, and you're not the only one making it, films have always been classified this way, for reasons I don't always understand. But it's there and we deal with it. Daniel Case (talk) 01:00, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

No, its not just american money. Check out the credits, there are 6 companies from Germany and 1 from the US who funded the movie:

1. Neunte Babelsberg Film (ger)
2. Filmfoerderungsanstalt (ger)
3. Deutsche Filmfoerderfonds (ger)
4. Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (ger)
5. Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung (ger)
6. Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen (ger)
7. Mirage Enterprises (us) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.133.229.178 (talk) 12:07, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Age of consent in Germany

This age of consent in Germany is currently 14. During the setting of the movie it was 14. This is fact. It's a fact that two different sources that are primarily indexes of German law have been found to support. One of those sources is cited elsewhere on Wikipedia as well, supporting the same fact. I don't edit on Wikipedia enough to know the ins and outs of decorum and standards but I do know that the goal is not to present a biased point of view, which is what is achieved by choosing the quote in question to be included without qualifying that the author of the quote was mistaken about the core of the quote's premise. I'd be fine with eliminating the review from the article entirely to avoid this debate, but if we're keeping it then it should be made clear that the author of the quote was incorrect in an assumption she made that is integral to the quote.

The morality of two individuals of the age presented by the movie engaging in relations is irrelevant to that fact that the setting of the movie is one in which the author of the quotes' assumption is incorrect. My edit is continually getting reverted with the half baked excuse that the sources are unreliable. I find it questionable given that the first source I cited was apparently sufficient enough to support another article who main subject is age of consent, and my edit is merely alluding to age of consent as part of a relatively minor clarification. This reeks of bias motivated reversion of my edits.

At this point, having been supported by two unrelated sources, which I see no reason to assume have motivation to distort the information, I believe the information has been demonstrated to be reliable enough to retain, even if the sources I've found are deemed not up to Wikipedia standards. Lack of an ideal source is not unilaterally grounds for removal of information, or else half of Wikipedia would be blanked. There is a middle ground in the case of insufficient sources for information that is likely to be supportable, and this situation, at minimum, qualifies as such. AaronMP84 (talk) 18:18, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I think we should just eliminate the language about the relationship's illegality. The rest of the sentence, and her quote, can stand without that. Daniel Case (talk) 19:01, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Her quote is what's introducing the idea of the relationship's illegality. In fact that's the main theme of her entire review, is that the relationship is a case of sexual abuse in the form of ephebophilia and she focuses on that to the almost total exclusion of the rest of the movie. The inclusion of a review with such clear bias (even if her bias is not exactly without merit) which ignores the cultural and legal setting of the subject of the review in my opinion necessitates being framed by an explanation of that bias in order to prevent the Wikipedia article from presenting it as unbiased. Given that it's a critical review, it's assumed that there's a certain level of bias and is not treated objectively, but this article and the summary quote included here easily misleads the casual reader of this article into thinking that the movie depicts a "forbidden" relationship. It does not, not when taken in context, anyways. AaronMP84 (talk) 19:37, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

If I understand Daniel Case's suggestion correctly, he would change the current lead-in text from "At the Huffington Post, Thelma Adams found the relationship between Hanna and Michael, which she termed abusive due to her mistaken belief that Michael was under the age of consent, more disturbing than any of the historical questions in the movie" to "At the Huffington Post, Thelma Adams found the relationship between Hanna and Michael more disturbing than any of the historical questions in the movie". I'm good with that. Honestly, I think there are too many quotes in that section period, but that's yet another issue. As for the change Aaron wants, that can't fly. We rarely cite to law on the English Wikipedia because such sources are considered primary and require interpretation. It's even worse on the English Wikipedia to cite to German laws. What the German Wikipedia does is, of course, their business.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:12, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

To elaborate on my answer, as maddening as it is, we are generally not allowed to point out mistakes our own sources make unless another reliable source does (and frankly, better to just report the accurate statement unless the fact that the source made the mistake to begin with is relevant to the article, which it is not here). As you guardedly admit, Aaron, the criticism of this relationship and how it is depicted in the film transcends the question of its real-world legality. Since the clause I suggest be dropped is really just an aside anyway, I am comfortable with editing the article Bbb23's way. Daniel Case (talk) 04:36, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Addendum: Aaron, I also commend this essay to your attention. Daniel Case (talk) 04:41, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I just noticed that Aaron went ahead and restored his edit to the article. Don't do that again. You've been reverted. You're now going to have to obtain a consensus for your version. You can't just insist on it.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:17, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I only edited this article originally because I had prior knowledge that the reviewer we're quoting clearly was overlooking. I made an unsourced edit which was rightly reverted asking for a source. I then found one, then another. I don't personally feel strongly about this issue, I basically just can get like a dog with a bone sometimes when it comes to trying to make sure something is done right, and that's why I've been pushing for the information I added. It's my opinion that undue weight is introduced in this article's critical reception section given that there is more negativity presented, and that the film did receive certain accolades and a generally favorable response. I think the quote in question is the worst of the bunch and honestly I'd move for removing it from the article entirely before keeping it as is. Regarding your linked essay, Daniel, it is good information, thank you. It does however have a mixed bearing on this situation. It provides a good rationale for both sides. To Bbb23's reference to the German Wikipedia; I'm not certain if you misunderstand me or not but just to clarify in case you do, the reference I cited that is also used elsewhere on Wikipedia was from the English Wikipedia. What the German Wikipedia does I am unaware of. At the end of the day, I really don't have a horse in the race on this one, I just saw someone being wrong and felt I could make things better. My two cents is that I still think the quote is inappropriate if left as it stands, but If I'm in the minority, I don't mind being wrong. That's about all the energies I've got to invest in this article. Have a good one, guys. AaronMP84 (talk) 14:10, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

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Neustadt

The link unhelpfully refers us to an article on the dozens of towns in the world called "Neustadt", without specifying which one is meant in this case.213.127.210.95 (talk) 15:00, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

I rewrote the sentence to take that out. It's a title on the screen, which would lead one to believe that a particular location was intended, but from reviewing the dab page it seems it could mean any number of Neustadts. I would be curious what German-speaking viewers made of this. Daniel Case (talk) 18:01, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Summary

For all the talk I think the plot summary is perfect.Eschoryii (talk) 22:38, 7 March 2018 (UTC)