He offers the friendless 66 year old a job and a place to live. He cannot love an ex-Nazi and that is all she really wants--love.
He comes for her a week later and finds out that she hung herself.
*****
Are these films comparable? Both center around extremely strong women who end up helpless.
One is about heavy sensuality and the other about repressed sexuality.
One co-stars a virgin boy and the other a mellow middle-aged priest.
Both center around tragic love relationships, one platonic (presumably), the other erotic.
Both feature Christian love: in Doubt it is apparent between the priest and troubled youth as well as the principal and her protege; in The Reader it is given by the sensual woman to the ill teenager at their first encounter.
One ends with doubt, the other a decisive resolution.
Both films are dominated by a pair of opposites: in Doubt the lively and sensuous (presumably abstinent) priest versus the frigid widow-turned-nun. In The Reader the illiterate, sensual woman stands in contrast to the learned, virgin teenage boy.
*****
When I decided to see both movies, I did not intend to find such fundamental parallels. Nor did they strike me until I began to write this review.
I suppose any two Hollywood melodramas are comparable, but it is interesting to figure out how.
Are the producers testing the public, having purposely planned the simultaneous screenings?
If so, now you know so that you can avoid surprise and confusion when confronted on the street by someone with a microphone.
So reread this carefully.
