MB UNIUD

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TIMES AND THE OBSERVER ABOUT THE READER.

The Times begins the review with the adverb "cynically", and so the reader may easily understand the personal idea of the narrator.

The review continues with the novel from which the film comes from and the speaking voice talks about his colleague Kevin Maher of The Times.

Then you can read the description of the female character: "Hanna a former SS Guard, she also, as a woman in her thirties, has a sexual relationship with a child of 15". You can read Hanna,s story ("A former prison camp guard implicated in the horrific death by fire of 300 women, Hanna is put on trial in the 1960s alongside five of her colleagues. There is a fact about Hanna which, if she chose to admit it, would reveal the other women's claims that she was the ringleader to be lies. But she keeps quiet and as a consequence receives a far more punitive sentence than her co-defendants").

You can find often the intrusion of the narrator: "from what we already know".

The male protagonist is presented as "the one person who guesses the secret" and "her former child lover".

You can find also rhetoric questions ("Should he make public the information that would deny the German judiciary their scapegoat and link him to a woman publicly vilified daily?").

Literature has a very important role: "the redeeming power of literature works its magic".

Last but not least you can find some expedients used in the film: "Winslet's fierce, intensely felt performance is obliterated by an unsuccessful make-up job that fails to age her and instead just makes her look weird and flaky" and "Fiennes's awkward, buttoned-up version of Michael is difficult to reconcile with the younger, more open characterisation delivered by David Kross".

At the end you can find other rhetoric questions: "And it becomes increasingly unclear what the film is actually about: personal and national guilt? Romantic trauma? Or the transformative power of the written word?".

In the review of The Guardian you can find (as The Times) the narrator's point of view and you can understand it from the following words: "exemplary", "superbly", "beautifully" and "finest".

First of all The Observer gives some information about the film and the main characters (Kate Winslet, David Kross and Ralph Fiennes).

The Observer speaks about the novel from which the film comes from: "In certain ways they sharpen Bernard Schlink's bestselling German novel of 1995 which deals with a subject - Nazi concentration camps and the Holocaust - that has hung over my generation since the outbreak of war in 1939, days after my sixth birthday".

Philip French talks also about other films: "Chaplin's The Great Dictator" and "the Boulting brothers' film about the incarceration of the anti-Nazi cleric Martin Niemöller, Pastor Hall".

He writes the Holocaust film history up to "Roberto Benigni's sickly Oscar-winning Life is Beautiful".

After that the speaking voice speaks about the male character ("Michael Berg, the innocent narrator of The Reader").

The Observer's review has a very important characteristic: it presents the structure of the film ("the movie is in three sections, with a couple of codas"),this is a difference with the other review.

An important point is the description of the main points: "guilt, responsibility and the relationship between generations".

You can find the presentation of the narrative techniques: "Scene by scene, we're gripped, but the metaphor is elusive, the narrative unconvincing and the overall effect vague and unpersuasive".

At last Philip French expresses his personal opinion about the movie: "I'm also a little troubled by the movie being made in English. And, disconcertingly, the books Michael reads from are English versions".

The review, as the other one, ends with a rhetoric question.