The Reader

4.00
    The Reader
    2008

    Synopsis

    The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.

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    Cast

    • Kate WinsletHanna Schmitz
    • Ralph FiennesMichael Berg
    • David KrossYoung Michael Berg
    • Lena OlinRose Mather
    • Bruno GanzProfessor Rohl
    • Jeanette HainBrigitte
    • Hannah HerzsprungJulia
    • Karoline HerfurthMarthe
    • Volker BruchDieter Spenz
    • Alexandra Maria LaraYoung Ilana Mather

    Recommendations

    • 75

      ReelViews

      The Reader is closer to a near miss than a rousing success but, on balance, this is still worth seeing for those who enjoy complexity and moral ambiguity within the context of a melodrama.
    • 70

      The Hollywood Reporter

      An engaging period drama. But German postwar guilt is not the most winning subject matter for the holiday season.
    • 67

      Entertainment Weekly

      The film is notable for its nice performances, its handsome photography, and its very active music. If the preceding praise sounds generic, so is the movie.
    • 63

      New York Post

      Although the script works in a couple of pages of collegiate-level ethical debate about "the question of German guilt," what the movie is really interested in is the question of German sex. So think of it as "Schindler's Lust."
    • 60

      Newsweek

      The Reader can feel stilted and abstract: the film's only flesh-and-blood characters spend half the movie separated. But its emotional impact sneaks up on you. The Reader asks tough questions, and, to its credit, provides no easy answers.
    • 60

      New York Daily News

      Provocatively intentioned, The Reader is a movie worth seeing - the kind of film you'll think about for days afterward. But when all is said and done, you're likely to wonder why the impact wasn't greater still.
    • 60

      The New York Times

      The film is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it's about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation.
    • 50

      Variety

      Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.

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