Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

The Reader (2008)

Director: Stephen Daldry

Time Out rating

Average user rating

48 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Ralph Fiennes is Michael Berg, the present-day narrator of this film and Bernard Schlink’s 1995 novel, a middle-aged German lawyer whom we first encounter making breakfast for a younger bedfellow but refusing to exchange intimacy for commitment. We reconvene in 1958 and 15-year-old Michael (David Kross), a clever child from an academic family, loses his virginity to taciturn Hanna (Kate Winslet), a mysterious, 36-year-old trolleybus worker whom he encounters in the street. He falls in love; she enjoys hearing him read from Tolstoy until she disappears one day without warning. Several years later, Michael, a law student, encounters Hanna in a new context – one that reveals devastating facts about his former lover. A new, unusual relationship emerges, at a distance, and one that stretches over many years. To reveal more would damage the debate at the film’s heart: an argument that pitches feelings against facts and, necessarily, asks more questions than it answers.

David Hare’s unshowy, thoughtful screenplay, Stephen Daldry’s unfussy direction and Roger Deakins and Chris Menges’s impressive cinematography are faithful to the detail and tenor of Schlink’s novel, which is a complex beast in simple clothing. ‘The Reader’ has been called a Holocaust film but that’s not entirely accurate. It would be better tagged a post-Holocaust work as it pitches itself between the known facts of that cataclysm and the unanswerable philosophical questions of its fallout relating to responsibility, law, justice and forgiveness; all the while considering education, and literacy, as crucial to those debates. Its dynamic is generational: Schlink and Berg are second-generation voices, embroiled in first-generation issues, addressing a third-generation audience. Its issues are infinite and moveable. It’s a bold and challenging work.

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London Issue 2002, Jan 1-7, 2009

Email Tweet Share

User reviews of this film

Ric_Braz said...

Posted on Aug 05 2009 09:02 Budd you are going on about the Holocaust once again. It is a film about love and infatuation for an older woman that is greatly complicated by her past. At no point does the film try to say that he past does not matter or because she could not read then all is okay. Amongst other things it is brilliant at raising the issue of how a nation of normal people became a nation of murderers so easily and this is something to study not brush under the carpet. Some people once a mention of the war is made immediately clam up and don't try to analyse how and why. You are one of these. Desperate move to quote Adilf Hitler I feel.

Report as inappropriate
Antonella said...

Posted on Aug 04 2009 21:06 The holocaust is a very important issue and I dont believe it cant be missed at all....but if we are discussing about responsability for it...if you talk to any german person about it, they all feel responsable for this genocide....which is the right attitude to have in the end.....so K. Wins - Hannah, in the film is taking full reponsability for what happened, and she pays the consequenses for that,,,,although she is not the only one to blame....we know too well she is not the only one who must pay for such issue....I think this film works as it enables one to think about it on this terms. (Sorry about my written english but Im italian, and I dont often write in english.)

Report as inappropriate
Budd Greco said...

Posted on Aug 04 2009 19:45 As Adolf Hitler himself said..As with a few critics some people totally missed the point of the Holocaust...

Report as inappropriate
Ric_Braz said...

Posted on Aug 04 2009 14:01 Budd as with a few people on this and seemingly most of the critics you have also missed the point. One of the refreshing aspects is that the Film never asks for the sympathy vote, never directs you as to how you feel about it. I am staggered how many people think this is some sort of sympathy film for the SS. Just nonsense! It was very reassuring to see the interviews of various people on the DVD, including Daltry, and see what they were trying to achieve and achieve it they did perfectly. Look at this film as just a nazi insight is totally missing the point.
Quite what the comparison of Fiennes' parts were I do not know. Yes they are clearly similar but they are totally different works. He was probably bored with teh similarity too. Perhaps you could let us know any differences in Hugh Grant's parts.

Report as inappropriate
Budd Greco said...

Posted on Aug 04 2009 10:29 Well I shall begin by stating that I enjoyed this movie..Am I the only one to observe that with Ralph F in it that it had an not unrecognisable link to The English Patient...No..Well in the english patient Ralf `s character is split into two parts..Burned man and man before burning..In this his charactes is again intwo..old and young..In the Eng Pat he is obsessed with a lover..In this he is obsessed with a lover..Both have tragic consequences and in both Ralph feels in some way responsible for the fate of his lover...Now you are beginning to get the link..Oh yes you are..But back to the movie..2 points One the idea that an individual can help burn 300 people to death and face twenty years in jail rather than confess to being illiterate is frankly..TOSH..Second ..I do not like to be manipulated by a movie script..We are deliberately led down the path of feeling some sympathy for the K.WIN character..but be honest ..if the movie had contained a cutback scene to her standing refusing to open the doors and allowing the 300 to burn..How much sympathy then would she have received.....The movie, while pretending to tackle the thorny issue of ultimate responsibility succeeds only in minimising truly horrific events by a venere of love and vulnerability..Ah Well The Poor Lassy couldna read..so murderin folk for the SS is understandable then..mmmm..Oh yes and the ending is poor as ultimately the movie has no where to go ..and that is where it ends up..No-Where..but K.W best ever acting performance..and is is just me or have all Ralf F performances been down-hill since the English Patient.

Report as inappropriate
antonella said...

Posted on May 05 2009 21:27 I think "the reader" is a fascinating, moving film, I can also understand why some would not like it. I believe that to put a novel into film is not an easy task, those who have read the novel , disliked the film, I think this is quite common. I also find the negative comments of some of you interesting...But if someone fall asleep during the film I dont think is because the film is boring, but maybe this gay needed a rest, so better going to bed rather than sleeping in a cinema.... :)

Report as inappropriate
Simon Cooper said...

Posted on Mar 20 2009 20:00 I fine The Reader an almost-perfect film. From the first shot of a boiled egg, which somehow made visual the repression of Ralph Fiennes, we are grabbed and know we are watching something beautiful, precious, a work of art. The acting is impeccable, especially David Kross as the young boy experiencing his first love, a love which will shatter his life.
Kate Winslett is utter believable, and the love/sex scenes done with great taste and never exploitative, a tricky skill indeed. This film should have got Best Film and Best Director Oscars instead of the ghastly "Slumdog". I think along with "The Hours" it shows Stephen Daldry to be a director of great subtlety and talent. I would see any film he made.

Report as inappropriate
Ric_Braz said...

Posted on Feb 24 2009 09:05 Without doubt your last offering is the most pretencious, garbled drivel I have ever read. For someone who has so much to say, but actually says very little, you sure do not know where the shift key is. I preferred your first literary assassination where you said how much you disliked it, said you had not seen it and gave it 3 stars.

Report as inappropriate
PERFECT DAY said...

Posted on Feb 22 2009 13:58 UK - are you still sucking on a fag?
You sound more wheezy than you ever did.

Report as inappropriate
usman khawaja said...

Posted on Feb 22 2009 05:49 A GORGEOUS ILLITERATE CHEKOV FAN WITH A TONED BODY AND 3 JOBS ]---------------kate winslett seduces ,she cooks ,she cycles ,she bathes her teenage lover in a bathtub ,she sacrifices her job for him ,she becomes a martyr and then she learns to read after appreciating homer and chekov simultaneously as she is also recruited by socialist nationalists who fail to determine her educational qualifications into three jobs where she is obviously interviewed but selected so nobody at the trial for her war crimes at aushwitz mentions anything about her ouvrae while all other records were enough to be scrutinized in detail but her introspective curriculum vitae was of no consequence .
a ludicrous fable with even ralph fiennes totally miscast where he has no semblance with his 15 year old self played by david kross -this has too many flaws in the script to even be commended as a fantasy adventure .
the hilarity of how we contemplate illogical fiction and fake art is exaggerating in the search for an origonal script which is restricted to philandering morons like danny boyle and second rate plagiarised versions of bollywood .
winslett plays a woman who indulges in sex tantrums and kama sutra in german glory with close introspective observations of her adolescent lover and his crown jewels ,
her choice of langerie is somewhat dubious as in the swimming sequence in the idyllic ravine ,but she has a rather kind nature as she takes a huge blame for a whole national crime to become a scapegoat and a martyr for the entire german nation who according to this fable built thousands of death camps and killed millions in a milieu where millions were aware of the crimes as well as the rest of the world too .
but then were dachau or auschwitz ever bombed or even strafed by allies just so they could bring the wires down and help the inmates escape .
although a church is bombed with 300 jewish women locked inside to burn alive while the six gaurds are wary to let them out as they might not be able to control the chaos .
this rather paranoid ,pretentious and contemptuous view of humanity tries to make us feel guilty by implying we are all criminals as we observe the laws but not morality .
unfortunately the transient milieu has no respect for any law either and morality was the first casualty when adam and eve decided to indulge themselves.
there goes the debate about law and morality and justice which is rare and precious in all eras and milieus .
the reader is not just illiterate it is also dyslexic like its admirers who could not decipher a working woman on a tram reading tickets cannot be illiterate .
as for kate she deserves an oscar for all the aerobics she indulged in to tone up for the erotic german kama sutra with her youthful well endowed lover who cannot get over her because she was such a typical dysfunctional sadomasochistic character who slaps him for a birthday present .
there are other hysterical idealistic youth too who suggest everyone who knew about death camps must be shot .
it made me think about abu garib and gitmo bay and what that would imply in modern terms .
also congratulations to lena olin for giving the most snobbish and exaggerated performance of a death camp victim who has survived aushwitz ,
she denies others absolution but to me it seemed she needed it herself with her atrocious arrogance and an attitude which redeems jade goody as a saint .
finally the war crimes court needs to be rebuked for a mistrial as they did not look at the educational qualifications of a woman on trial who was bent on martyrdom to win a golden statuette .
they fully aided her endeavours to perpetuate a so called moralist drama that ridicules not just holocaust but art in particular as propagandist trash .
watch this if you like to see full frontal nudity and some well designed sex circus between an illiterate woman and her adolescent paramour and forget the rest

Report as inappropriate
nic said...

Posted on Feb 17 2009 10:39 Very interesting and thought provoking. I didn't understand each characters motivations all the time, but then I think that is part of the power of the film, that you can read into it what you will. Definetely worth seeing.

Report as inappropriate
matt said...

Posted on Feb 13 2009 21:35 to colin hall dexter: have you ever read the book. because you completely miss the message in your relentless search of imperfections. the book was written in english therefore the movie is as well. you probably were disappointed after they stopped showing the sex scenes and was pissed off after that

Report as inappropriate
fascinated said...

Posted on Feb 10 2009 09:48 Like all good art, this film seems very divisive, which proves that those who don't like it are wrong because of the above statement. QED

Report as inappropriate
Ric_Braz said...

Posted on Feb 10 2009 09:07 Usman, whilst mentioning dyslexic you might actually like to look at your own feeble and utterly negative report and realise there are a stack of spelling effors and no puntuation whatsoever. Why people like you get near a keyboard to write such ill informed drivel is beyond me. The reviews are split between those who loved it (most) and those that seem to hate it with avengance but they rarely admit to why this is.

Report as inappropriate
Tim said...

Posted on Feb 09 2009 14:07 I thought it was a beautiful and moving film. No one moved a muscle when it ended, we all sat in the cinema shell shocked... most of us cried...

Report as inappropriate