<p>If you saw this movie, please help me out. </p>
<p>In one of the courtroom scenes, the prosecuting attorney asks Hannah about something that had happened when she was a prison guard, and her attorney objected, noting that she couldn’t have reliable knowledge about that because it was 20 years ago. It caught me off guard in the movie and I began to question the sequence of events as it is told in the flashback. For a few minutes I started thinking that she’d been a guard prior to meeting Michael, because he’s only fifteen when they meet, but he’s a law student when observing the trial. So if the attorney was correct, then her job as a guard would have been before she met Michael. But I soon realized it was just a script/dialogue error.</p>
<p>My friend I saw it with also noted the discrepancy, but neither one of us can find reference to this mistake on the internet, so now we’re doubting our recollection of the movie (or at least, what we thought we heard the attorney say).</p>
<p>But I thought she worked as a guard because she wouldn’t take the promotion with the transportation company. The movie leads you to believe she is offered the promotion, turns it down, then moves to look for a new job, which is the guard.</p>
<p>But you’re suggesting she did the prison guard stint before she met Michael and worked on the train? So then why did she move away at the end of that summer?</p>
<p>I think it was 2 different jobs. She had left an earlier job due to not wanting to take the promotion with the transportation company. Then she became a concentration camp guard. Afterward, she worked for a transportation company, and met Michael. She left that job for an unknown reason, but we could guess that perhaps she was offered a promotion.</p>
<p>I had read the book, and it seems that is the way the book described it. I didn’t find the movie confusing perhaps for that reason.</p>
<p>My friend who was with me had also read the book, and still believed her prison guard occupation was after she met him. In fact (not that wikipedia is the ultimate source on this), Wikipedia’s summary of the movie includes this sentence: She joined the SS to avoid a job promotion that would have revealed it. </p>
<p>Ugh… maybe I will have to read the book. My friend said the movie was very true to the book.</p>
<p>From Amazon’s site:
"From School Library Journal
YA. Michael Berg, 15, is on his way home from high school in post-World War II Germany when he becomes ill and is befriended by a woman who takes him home. When he recovers from hepatitis many weeks later, he dutifully takes the 40-year-old Hanna flowers in appreciation, and the two become lovers. The relationship, at first purely physical, deepens when Hanna takes an interest in the young man’s education, insisting that he study hard and attend classes. Soon, meetings take on a more meaningful routine in which after lovemaking Michael reads aloud from the German classics. There are hints of Hanna’s darker side: one inexplicable moment of violence over a minor misunderstanding, and the fact that the boy knows nothing of her life other than that she collects tickets on the streetcar. Content with their arrangement, Michael is only too willing to overlook Hanna’s secrets. She leaves the city abruptly and mysteriously, and he does not see her again until, as a law student, he sits in on her case when she is being tried as a Nazi criminal. Only then does it become clear that Hanna is illiterate and her inability to read and her false pride have contributed to her crime and will affect her sentencing. The theme of good versus evil and the question of moral responsibility are eloquently presented in this spare coming-of-age story that’s sure to inspire questions and passionate discussion.?Jacki:</p>
<p>From the NY Times book review:
"Michael Berg, the narrator and title character of ‘‘The Reader,’’ by Bernhard Schlink, is a cautious, self-protective young man who shies away from messy situations and ends up as something of a recluse. He meets his great love in a small university town sometime in the late 1950’s. Hanna Schmitz is a streetcar conductor. Michael is a high school student with hepatitis. When he vomits in the street, she cleans him up and marches him home. A few months later, after he has recovered, he visits her apartment with a bouquet of flowers, a thank-you offering suggested by his mother. Within a week, Hanna and Michael are embroiled in a passionate love affair.</p>
<p>The movie begins in 1958, when Michael is 15. We don’t know where Hanna goes after she leaves Michael and her job as a street car conductor. Eight years later, at her trial, she is questioned as to why she joined the SS in 1943 (I believe). In reply, she said something about working in a factory and learning that the SS was looking for recruits. Teri, I think you might have missed the initial date of 1958 when it flashed across the screen at the start of the film. That would have cleared everything up for you.</p>
<p>On another note, I’m very glad that I didn’t see the Library Journal review of the book! It gives away the entire plot–why bother reading the book or seeing the film? I’ve given up reading film reviews in the Chicago Tribune for this reason–I grew tired of having the story spoiled by reviewers who think that they need to recount every plot twist and nuance.</p>
<p>Definitely before she met Michael, which explains the loneliness and need for affection. There are many layers to their relationship and especially what it provides her.</p>