The Reader |  | Director: Stephen Daldry
Actors: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Matthias Habich, David Kross, Susanne Lothar
Studio: The Weinstein Company
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.93
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Rating:  128 reviews
Sales Rank: 1340
Format: Color, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 123 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: WEID1000397D
UPC: 796019819572
EAN: 0796019819572
ASIN: B001PPLJIQ
Theatrical Release Date: 2008
Release Date: April 14, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 04/14/2009
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
Stills from The Reader (Click for larger image)
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 128
We are all innocent February 5, 2010
R. Attila (Hungary)
Fancy a heartbreak? Watch this film.
Michael is a successful middle-aged lawyer with a restless personal life. He remembers his teenage youth when he met and had a short but passionate affair with his first love - a simple older woman who was living an orderly, dutiful but reclusive life. The age difference could be disturbing to some, but I think the woman being full of repressed feelings and individuality, she was on a similar emotional level as our teenage boy and used her sexual energy to experience some freedom through ecstasy.
For pretty obvious reasons (to the viewer), she asks Michael to read books to her out loud. She is so keen to keep this particular reason a secret that she even causes great harm to herself protecting it.
I know I'm talking in sign language here, but don't wanna spoil the story. So I'll end by saying that it really is worth watching. A tale about how sometimes doing your 'duty' for the lunatic people that run your country will be considered evil by later generations. A tale about a good man's inability to empathise and forgive. A tale about a good woman having her heart broken - not by the generation that had no mercy on her, but by the man that she had grown to believe in.
 Female Pedophilia Run Amuck In America January 29, 2010
M. Busby (United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
No one seems to care this is a book about a female pedophile. It seems the image of female pedophiles in our society are okay but male pedophiles are cast out and condemned as worse than animals. What an awful statement about the double standard in this screwed-up female-worshipping society we live in today. The author and publisher of this book should be condemned for writing and publishing it.
About the book/movie...I am not impressed with a story that would let an accused person suffer because the protagonist's character, especially a protagonist who is attending law school, is too weak to speak up concerning the special knowledge he has that would reduce the culpability of the accused...unless the central part of the story was his character and the moral dilemma he was in and subsequent suffering for not have more moral courage to speak out. However, his lack of moral courage does not seem to be the point of the story. In fact, the only point of the story I can ascertain is the cheap propaganda the "Holocaust" receives upon the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Only people who enjoy wallowing in the self-imposed misery of Jewish angst, or who enjoy watching female pedophilia, should buy this movie.
 Kate Winslet's best performance ever. December 30, 2009
S. Spears (Florence, MA)
The Reader is a deep, emotionally wrenching drama. Kate Winslet gives a superb performance, as Hannah Schmitz. Hannah had participated in heinous crimes against Jews, during World War II. Hannah is lonely, and leads an isolated life. She has no family, friends, or companions. After the war ends, Hannah is living alone and working in Berlin, Germany.
One miserably rainy day in 1958 Berlin, 15-year-old Michael Berg becomes sick, while coming home from school. Hannah happens to spot Michael vomiting, outside of her apartment building. She helps Micheal clean-up, and then sends him home. Michael is later diagnosed with Scarlet Fever, and has to stay in bed for weeks, to fully recover.
Michael returns to see Hannah after his convalescence, bringing her flowers to thank her. He spots Hannah putting a stocking on her bare leg, as he's leaving. Hannah sees him ogling her. Hannah is in her 30s. And she's seen as being wise and worldly, by the naive Micheal.
Next time that Micheal returns to Hannah's, she asks him to do some chores. When working, Michael gets filthy, and Hannah insists that he bathe, before he leaves. While Micheal is in the tub, Hannah slips quietly into the bathroom. She strips naked, and slyly seduces Micheal, right then and there. It's the start of a summer affair between them.
During their time together, Hannah insists the Michael read a variety of literature, poems, and prose to her. Hannah cannot read herself. And she comes to rely on Michael's readings, to expand her understanding of the world, as well as for own pleasure. By the end of the summer of '58, the affair between Hannah and Michael ends. Michael then attends law school, to pursue a law career.
As fate would have it, Hannah is caught and tried for her participation in Nazi war crimes. Michael is a part of the trial, as a budding lawyer. He had no idea that Hannah could be capable of such vicious acts. It's all a devastating revelation for Micheal, and he tries to figure out how to handle it.
As the years pass, Michael continues to be entwined in Hannah's life, even after she's sentenced to prison, and he grows up and marries someone else. Micheal just can't abandon Hannah, and this leads to his realization, of how deep his feelings are for her. For Micheal, this leads ultimately to tragic heartbreak.
This film belongs to Kate Winslet, who should win an Oscar. Ralph Fiennes as the adult Micheal Berg, is good, but not great. He seems to be trying too hard, to convey sorrowful angst. David Kross plays the young Micheal Berg, and his performance shows an incredible emotional fluency. He too, should win an Oscar.
The bleak, murky city streets of Berlin, set the emotional tone for the movie. There's always a feeling of heavy gloom, running throughout the course of this film. The racy sex scenes between Hannah and young Michael, manage to temporarily jolt the viewer out of the somber mood that cloaks the film. The full-frontal nude scenes of young Micheal, are alarming though, especially since he's a minor. The producers probably thought that explicit male nudity is hip. It just winds up being tasteless and seedy, in this film.
The main reason to view this film, is Kate Winslet. This has got to be the best performance, of her already stellar career. The movie is depressing overall. But Kate's performance alone, makes seeing this film worthwhile.
VERY well acted and written. Not sure what to think of its message, though. December 29, 2009
RMurray847 (Albuquerque, NM United States)
Warning: this review contains a significant spoiler. If you really have no idea what the movie is about, and don't want to know...read no further. I don't discuss anything beyond what you find in virtually any review about the film...but be warned nonetheless.
THE READER is fabulously well-acted, and thus it is a gripping drama. When it's all said-and-done, though...I was left perplexed as to how to react. I didn't have mixed feelings about it...I literally wasn't sure how I felt.
That may be both a huge accomplishment and a failing. THE READER essentially conspires to make us sympathize (to one extent or another) with a Nazi war-criminal. In a way, the film may be doing this to help illustrate how easy it is to turn away or ignore horrible things going on. To give some sense of how so many Germans could have turned a blind eye at the atrocities of the SS during World War II. Yet by the same token, the film cheats in evoking these feelings because we are introduced to the main character years after the war, and are led to see her in a sympathetic manner...feelings that stick with us throughout the film.
Kate Winslet plays Hanna, a 30 something woman working as a conductor on a streetcar in post-war Germany. She lives a quiet life in a tiny apartment, making a very small ripple in the world. One day, she shows a little kindness to 15 year-old Michael, and when he returns to Hanna's apartment to thank her some weeks later, the two fall into a deep, passionate and highly inappropriate affair. Hanna clings to Michael for some kind of comfort, yet she is also quite demanding on him. She will give him virtually anything he can imagine sexually, yet she holds up a very solid wall against his efforts to build a truly intimate relationship. He is, understandably, madly in love with this amazing older woman who is teaching him things his friends can only imagine. And he also reads to Hanna (at her insistence): short stories, novels like HUCKLEBERRY FINN, etc.
One day, Hanna just disappears and Michael is left bereft. Years later (I won't explain the circumstances), Michael finds that Hanna is on trial for war crimes...apparently she was a guard who led a fair share of women to the death chambers and also left a large group of women and children to die in a church fire. There is no question she was involved...but to what extent? Did she have a valid reason? And does Michael know something about Hanna that could help her? And if he DOES...should he use it, or should he let Hanna "suffer" a large punishment?
This dilemma is at the crux of what the film is about. It explores guilt and it also explores the idea of a "shared" guilt. I know the book upon which THE READER is based was written by a German, so I believe both works also are working at understanding the national guilt Germany feels, or the world thinks it should feel. And it was this exploration that left me perplexed. Am I supposed to sympathize with Hanna? If I were in Michael's shoes, would I want to help her or hurt her or ignore her?
And in this story, Michael is also deeply affected by the sense of loss and betrayal Hanna's sudden disappearance left him with. He has become a person who is closed-off from his feelings and reluctant to open himself to others. Frankly, he's become an unlikeable, uptight jerk.
How the relationship between Hanna and Michael grows and changes and concludes is the through-line of this movie. It is certainly and interesting and compelling drama.
And the three stars of the film make it very, very watchable. Kate Winslet, who can do virtually no wrong, gives one of her best performances. Her character is frequently unlikeable (even before we know about her past)...yet we can certainly see why a 15 year old would be hopelessly smitten by this damaged person. And although her old-age makeup isn't always the best, Winslet develops her character convincingly over several decades. The young Michael is played by David Kross, a very talented young man who very convincingly portrays the reserve of a child of a wealthy family, as well as the enthusiasm for sex that only teens can have, along with a very touching effort to try to understand Hanna and make her happy. Older Michael is played by Ralph Fiennes, who once again shows how many different ways a closed-off, repressed person can be played. It's another type-casting for Fiennes, but as always, he pulls it off as no other modern actor can.
So while I found THE READER a perplexing puzzle at times, I still greatly enjoyed the film. It is crisply directed, and the cinematography makes the German countryside sparkle. It is not flashy, but it is still softly powerful and disquieting in how much it can make us care for these far from perfect people.
Intense! December 28, 2009
Tanisha Ross (chicago,IL)
This movie is really gripping. You watch and you find yourself very intrigued in what you think is just an affair of an older woman and a much younger man. Then you are hit with these very moving details as the story unfolds and I feel that it tugs right at the heart strings. A+ acting and an A+ story that touched me more the second time I watched it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 128
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