Spiritual Lessons From the 2009 Oscar Nominees

'The Reader': We Need to Move Past Pain

5 nominations, including Best Picture

Sometimes, the question isn't why bad things happen to good people. It's why people do such bad things—and what we can do with the aftermath.

When Hanna Schmitz first hooks up with 15-year-old Michael Berg, she bears two secrets. One, she's illiterate. Two, she's a former Nazi—a guard at Auschwitz who participates in the murder of 300 women and children in a church. These secrets both harden and haunt her: Unable to admit her illiteracy, she confesses to writing an account of the church murder—an admission that puts her in prison. And, on the eve of her release, she kills herself.

It's hard to know what to do with Hanna's life: Several characters openly question whether we can really learn anything from the horrors of Nazi Germany—how reasonable people could commit such horrors, and just where God was in it all. The movie gently suggests that sometimes the best we can do is, very simply, move on.