Circumstances and the prevailing laws of society can radically change ordinary people and compel them to commit atrocities. The Reader, produced by Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack (who both passed away prior to the film’s release), is a fictional case study.
When a serious film opens with an extreme close-up of an egg, one would think it is a set-up that would lead to something or that there is something symbolic about it. Neither is true. The boiled egg ends up in someone’s stomach and does not make another appearance, and the film fails to touch upon the subject of birth.
It certainly must mean something; though, I have no clear idea what it could be. Surely something so loud cannot exist without a specific purpose in a film in which the visuals are so carefully conjured to esthetically move the story forward.
Perhaps it is merely suggestive of the commencement of the protagonist’s sexual adventure, for, a little while later, we see him as an adolescent. Oscillating between the past and the present, the script is divided, invisibly, into two distinct parts; and one catches up with the other.
Sadly, like the fowl egg at the start, Stephen Daldry’s drama too appears to say nothing of significance and turns a mass murderer into an orderly citizen who was simply following the rules of the book. If forgiveness, healing, and moving on, however, is the message intended by the producers, they could not have asked for a better swansong.
The Reader — on IMDB
