Melinda Sue Gordon/The Weinstein Company
Bringing “The Reader,” Bernhard Schlink’s volatile novel, to the big screen posed significant challenges to just about everyone involved. First obstacle was the material’s weighty, difficult theme. It explores one of the most generally unexplored questions emergent from the Holocaust, one which directly addresses complex notions of collective memory not often seen in highfalutin Hollywood productions. It seeks to evoke the precise nature of the Holocaust’s legacy as perceived by the German generations born after the fact, and forced to confront the inexorable knowledge that loved ones had promulgated such a monumental atrocity.