The movie THE READER presents DYSLEXIA as a life-force issue

The Movie THE READER presents 'DYSLEXIA'as an adult daily life-force issue.

Went to see the movie THE READER last night. I hadn’t seen any reviews of this movie, so had no idea of how it is being promoted. Now I see it as the perfect complement to the Indian movie of last year, that so cogently presented 'dyslexia' as a social and learning difficulty in children. (Title eludes me). But for my money THE READER is a brilliant presentation of the impact of ‘dyslexia’ on one woman’s adult life.

So now we have the adult version.

It has WWII as a background context, and some viewers might see ‘pride’ as being a major theme. But if we change what we see as pride, to see it really as FEAR – fear of being seen to be dumb and stupid - we now see the impact of ‘dyslexia’ as a daily life issue. More than this, we see the fear of not being accepted, creating a desperate need to fit in, to comply - and yet to always remain aloof, to remain safe.

With 'dyslexics' , a life-time of struggle and failure creates a huge fear of not being 'good-enough' , of not being acceptable, and of eventually being rejected by the people we love. This creates the 'perfectionist', the 'do-gooder', the 'workaholic', the 'critic', and the person who cannot be wrong and won't accept any criticism - a person whose 'solution' to the fears in his/her life creates the very lonliness he/she is desparately trying to avoid.

I will say no more, but hope that these comments will give a context and an insight into the depth of this movie that we otherwise may miss.

In this, the movie is brilliant (as it is otherwise as well), and I would urge anybody who wants to see what ‘dyslexia’ is as an adult life-force issue to see this movie. This is ‘dyslexia’ as I know it.

Laughton King