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
- 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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