Product Details

• Studio: Weinstein Co.
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001HN6972

Product Description

Amazon.com
What is the nature of guilt--and how can the human spirit survive when confronted with deep and horrifying truths? The Reader, a hushed and haunting meditation on these knotty questions, is sorrowful and shocking, yet leavened by a deep love story that is its heart. In postwar Germany, young schoolboy Michael (German actor David Cross) meets and begins a tender romance with the older, mysterious Hanna (Kate Winslet, whose performance is a revelation). The two make love hungrily in Hanna's shabby apartment, yet their true intimacy comes as Michael reads aloud to Hanna in bed, from his school assignments, textbooks, even comic books. Hanna delights in the readings, and Michael delights in Hanna.

Years later, the two cross paths again, and Michael (played as an adult by Ralph Fiennes) learns, slowly, horrifyingly, of acts that Hanna may have been involved in during the war. There is a war crimes trial, and the accused at one point asks the panel of prosecutors: "Well, what would you have done?" It is that question--as one German professor says later: "How can the next generation of Germans come to terms with the Holocaust?"--that is both heartbreaking and unanswerable. Winslet plays every shade of gray in her portrayal of Hanna, and Fiennes is riveting as the man who must rewrite history--his own and his country's--as he learns daily, hourly, of deeds that defy categorization, and morality. "No matter how much washing and scrubbing," one character says matter of factly, "some sins don't wash away." The Reader (with nods to similar films like Sophie's Choice and The English Patient dares to present that unnerving premise, without offering an easy solution. --A.T. Hurley

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What would you do?, January 16, 2009

By	L. Nicolson (Tampa, FL) - See all my reviews

I have just seen The Reader and find the film fascinating. However, after reading some of the reviews posted below, I concluded that the timeline of events were missed by some viewers and that some were expecting a more tightly woven ending. I will address the former, but the latter is more like real life, composed of loose ends and no clear answers. I will refrain from giving away the plot twists, preferring to allow the viewer to enjoy the unfolding plot.

To clarify, the narrative timeline is important and the questions the story raises are still relevant. The male lead, Michael meets Winslet's character Hannah first in 1958, AFTER the war. Whatever she did in the war is part of her past when they have their affair. He would have been a small child in the war, he is fifteen when they meet, and in his early 20s in law school. Her sudden disappearances and many of her choices are dictated by a personal secret that has dire consequences later, when Michael, now a law student, sees her again in a courtroom.

The viewer must understand that post war Germany felt, and still feels shame over the Holocaust and faced serious challenges when it was over and the nation had to answer for crimes against humanity. It's difficult to say what any of us would do in the same circumstances. We were not there. Would a person be swept along? Would they rationalize? Would they act in fear? In habitual obedience? What role does ignorance play? Can someone who is capable of great kindness, even tenderness, also be capable of evil, of knowing unthinking cruelty? Does one act nullify the other? What is the punishment when a whole nation is held in thrall? It's all easy to answer from a point of safety and security.

Watch the film for Winslet and Kross, who are astounding in the lead roles, watch it for the lessons it offers and the questions it asks. Too often we are satisfied with pure entertainment in the theater, this film is a chance to take away something more.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's not about reading, January 29, 2009

By	L. Power "nlp trainer" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

Throughout her illustrious acting career, Kate Winslet has created a series of compelling characters in movies such as Sense and Sensibility, Titanic, Hamlet, and now as Hanna in The Reader, for which she has gained
some overdue statuary, and a well deserved fifth Oscar nomination.

Act 1 opens with The Innocent yet Illicit Love Affair, an act of kindness to a 15 year old boy caught out sick in the storm. It helps to know in advance that it happens after the second world war.

The love scenes are candid and authentic, and for a while, we feel we can empathise with her. For the boy David, it's a sexual awakening that will direct his life. He expands her imagination by reading her the classics. Her passion and initial kindness is tempered by a perplexing coldness. It ends with her unannounced disappearance.

Act 2, The Trial, contains the meat of the story, explores the worst aspects of human behavior. Her coldness now becomes understood in the light of new and incriminating information, quite an inhuman portrait. Yet a new perplexity emerges, her seeming unwillingness to save herself. Here we have the crucial decisions made by her and her former lover. Will she help herself? Will Michael help her?

Act 3: The Aftermath.

On an emotional level, it is an exploration of fear, guilt and shame, and the consequences when we act out of these emotions.

On a more personal level is the question, what would we do?

There is a quotation by George Santayana: Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.


Will this performance finally win Kate Winslet an Oscar? She won the Golden Globe, and Meryl Streep was not nominated in the same category. She beat Meryl Streep in a different category for her role in Revolutionary Road.

Kate won the SAG award for this performance. Meryl also won in a different category for her performance in Doubt. Now they are both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

If I am voting for best performance of the year it has to be Kate. It's a very brave and daring performance that no other actress could have accomplished. By contrast Meryl gives a brilliant performance in a less challenging role. This is Meryl's record 15th nomination, and with only two statuettes sentimentality may weigh in her favor. If Meryl wins, then Kate may win next year for Revolutionary Road.

I must mention David Kross as the young Michael, a very promising performance from this actor. In fact, because of German law he had to wait till he turned 18 before filming the steamier scenes.

I hope you find this review helpful, and, if you do, pleased click yes.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Reader, February 11, 2009

By	Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"The Reader" has received largely favorable but mixed reviews. The movie explores themes of guilt, responsibility, and love. It is based upon a novel of the same name by Bernard Schlink, a German law professor. The larger part of the story tells of an affair between a 15 year old adolescent, Michael Berg, and a woman in her mid-30s, Hanna Schmitz, who works collecting fares on a trolley. Besides their physical relationship, Hanna wants Michael to read to her. He reads novels, poetry, and classics, the stuff of literature. The movie moves both backwards to tell of Hanna's unsavory past as a guard for the SS during the Holocaust and forwards, to recount Hanna's and Michael's lives subsequent to their relationship in the late 1950s. Michael becomes a lawyer. He marries, has a daughter, and divorces. He is a tense individual with difficulty forming an intimate relationship with a woman. Hanna is sentenced to life imprisonment for her role during the Holocaust. The movie describes Hanna's and Michael's relationship during Michael's adulthood and how it effects each of them.

Some viewers find this movie troubling in that it evokes sympathy for a woman deeply involved in the crimes of the Holocaust. I found that the movie developed Schmitz' character and thought the criticism misplaced. The movie also involves sexual abuse of a minor with many explicit scenes. Again, I did not see the movie as endorsing these activities. The flashbacks have been criticized for being difficult to follow, but I did not find this to be the case. I thought the manner in which the flashbacks were presented was integral to the story.

I found the movie compelling in its portrayal of the long relationship between its two major characters and in their frustrated searches for each other. The film develops the theme of guilt and responsibility as it applies to those who lived through the days of the Holocaust. It universalizes these themes to people everywhere,and pointedly individualizes them to show their role in the adult life of Michael Berg. Early in the movie one of Michael's teachers is lecturing on the role of secrecy as a literary device. The nature of individual secrets is probed throughout the movie. The nature of being a "reader" and of "reading" -- a spectator perhaps --is also a subject of this movie, as applied to both its protagonists. Kate Winslet offers a stellar performance of the hard and yet vulnerable Hanna Schmitz. I was taken with the movie while it was on the screen, and it continues to resonate in my thought.

Robin Friedman