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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 2008-12-30 17:45:08

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

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User reviews of this film

PEFECT DAY said...

Posted on Feb 06 2009 08:30 UK. Stop boasting about your two intelligent friends.
I have an intelligent car. Peace brother.

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usman khawaja said...

Posted on Feb 04 2009 19:53 i do not intend to even go near this mis conceived mis printed dyslexic reader
two of my very intelligent friends and they are jewish went to see it
and the wife had to shake her husband awake inthe end
she gave it half a star
i am generous as i have not seen it i wont give any or just 3 for charity

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Fatli said...

Posted on Jan 29 2009 11:32 This is the best film I have watched so far this year. I was really touched by the powerful endless love from Michael Berg to Hanna; I have wept for quite a while during the movie. People always say, your first one is always your most unforgettable one; but the love from Berg is beyond unforgettable; of course it is unfair to other women came along later in his life and Hanna has a big impact on him. Anyway, you cannot explain love in logical terms, if you can, it is not true love, right? As usual, Ralph Fiennes is very good in playing this type of character. Kate Winslet performance is excellent. This movie is beautifully made in every aspects. Just wish I am as lucky as Hanna; to have a man loves me unconditionally and believes in me no matter what happens in life.

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Sallyt said...

Posted on Jan 22 2009 09:18 I have great difficulty staying awake in the evenings and so was worried when my local cinema was not showing this film during the daytime when I prefer to go. However I didn't even yawn! I found the film engrossing and very well made. A real thought provoker. Winslets performance well deserving of any award which may come her way and young David Kross a star of the future. Not so keen on his transformation into Ralph Fiennes - too disimilar in looks to be credible. A good story, well told. I saw the film with my daughter and our homeward bound discussion of Hanna's situation varied in that she found Hanna guilty and responsible and I found her innocent and pathetic. See this film and make your own mind up.

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Russell said...

Posted on Jan 22 2009 09:17 If you like the kind of film that raises questions that don't have easy answers this is probably the film for you, quite apart from which it's an incredibly brave performance from Winslet, that should see her pick up masses of awards, its the kind of performance that reminds you just how good an actress she is. .. and helps forgive some of the dross she has been in. The performance of Kross too is also seriously impressively although Fiennes does take some of the edge of the emotions with a performance of sustained somnambulistic tendency.

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Anne said...

Posted on Jan 16 2009 21:01 I thought this a very thought provoking film. I thought the scenes with Winslet and Krosse so amazing. I can't imagine how difficult those scenes must have been for each actor, but for very different reasons. I did not believe that he wouldn't have tried to save her from the sentence she recieved. He may have found her actions horrid, yet that is not how he knew or experienced her. He also figured out her secret, and his professor gave him a very plausible reason for speaking up. I just don't believe her shame and guilt so profound that she wouldn't tell the truth about that one thing. She was the only guard to tell the truth. I found Fiennes his usual emotionally repressed self and the film went down hill for me because of his presence on screen. The David character went from an emotionally effusive youth to emotionally dead because of one, short, summer time affair? I didn't believe that either. I would recommend this film, but see it with some reservations. There were holes in the story for me, but I enjoyed the overall ideas.

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Fascinated said...

Posted on Jan 16 2009 13:12 The remark which gave me the greatest insight into Schmit's typical character was what she said concerning the burning of prisoners in the church, almost with exasperated incomprehension that anyone could not understand it: 'We were the guards, what were we supposed to do, let them go?' A sort of robotic inflexibility, only able to envisage out line of behaviour.

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Frances said...

Posted on Jan 16 2009 09:47 A waste of an evening and a waste of the medium of film - wooden, boring and pretentious.

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Ric_Braz said...

Posted on Jan 15 2009 12:44 KG great to see someone else who really enjoyed it. All I would say is that personally I feel it is Michael who is the main character and it is his feelings that shape the film and it is his life we follow more. Hanna Schmitz is purely the person who shapes these feelings inadvertantly.

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KG said...

Posted on Jan 15 2009 11:24 I saw this film last night. Entering i did not know what to expect. I was blown away, while feeling emotionally drained throughout and afterwards. This film built an extreme depth with both characters. i agree that this film does not make any bold moral message it is simple showing the deep affects upon their lives that simple relationships and personalities can have and lets you make your own decisions. Throughout the film I changed my mind of how I felt about Hanna Schmitt... i loved her, i despised her and i felt sorry for her. A great portayel of how immaturity and little life experiences can shape your future and how you think. Fantastic scene when Michael met her in prison attempting to see if she had grown and realised what her actions had resulted in, to his dissapointment she had not. Fantastic how she was able to keep the power throughout the film even in the end. Thought provoking.

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Ric_Braz said...

Posted on Jan 15 2009 09:17 Colin Hall Dexter, presumably three people, you do not have a clue do you? So apparently only films should be made in the language of the locality? The filming and direction are so brilliant that this is of no great concern. As for Kroll (it is Krosse) if you cared to show any accuracy at all. Many of teh actors show hints, and that is suffiecient, of a german accept or perhaps you would rather they had gone the whole hog and treated it like 'Allo 'Allo. Why does it matter that there are 6 words in German for the or is this just showing your immense knowledge. Why is the film inplausable? One of the beauties of the film. Why do we need some great moral message being flashed up on teh screen? You have been watching far too many Hollywood films that tell you what to think throughout. There is no clear message he and it is those that do not care to think for themselves that hate it. Just stick to Mamma Mia in future.

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Colin Hall Dexter said...

Posted on Jan 15 2009 06:27 One of the most irritating and pretentious films I've ever seen. An English-speaking film about Germans has a huge problem from the start. Hannah is supposed to teach herself to read from the texts of books she has heard read to her. The word for "THE" is her starting point. But there are I think six different words for THE in the German language. The whole thing is preposterously implausible. Winslet adopts a curious silght German accent, but none of the other characters does. No-one could possibly accept that Kroll metamorphoses into Ralph Fiennes in 20 or so years as in the film. And what are we supposed to make of the "message" of this film? The use of Auschwitz scenes to convince the audience of the great seriousness and moral purpose of the film, I found disgusting and pretentious. Winslet gives a good performance, but this alone is not worth the price of the ticket. The thing finally peters out in the slowest most boring end to any film I can remember. DON'T BOTHER TO GO.

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ray foulk said...

Posted on Jan 14 2009 12:56 This film is not just brilliant (though in some ways it can be criticised in normal film assessment terms) for me takes cinema to a new level of experience. I was not so much a spectator of the events, but drawn in as a participant. As a member of the human race this was unavoidable. To form opinions of the spectacle before me, making moral judgements about guilt, forgiveness, repentance, etc, as it progressed, forced me to decide whether or not I could sympathise with the former Nazi guard. The narrative is so carefully nuanced that issues such as “would I have been any different?” could not be avoided. So, in a sense the film, extending to the darkest corners of the human psyche was not so much doing so for the characters on screen, but rather, for the audience. In the end there is no perfect conclusion to the difficult questions raised, but I was forced to endure the thought processes, in my attempt to find the appropriate moral answers. The result is therefore about us, the audience, rather than the journeys of the characters themselves.

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Claire Francis said...

Posted on Jan 14 2009 03:20 This is not a 'nice' film. This is not a 'plot' based film, it's an ideas based film. It's a film which raises more questions than it answers and you'll find none of your spoon fed hollywood nonsense here, it is full of complex difficult to stomach realities. I won't spoil it for you by discussing particulars but this film left me aghast at it's portrayal of the way low-self esteem, pride, fear and feelings of stupidity can lead to the utter destruction of a person, no matter how beautiful they start, and induce the cruellest behaviour and irrevocable wrecking of lives and chances. I felt sorry for the main character (in my eyes Winslet) and what's more, I felt guilty about it. This is a challenging film and it has stayed with me for nearly a week after seeing it. Winslet has a shaky start but pulls it off magnificently thereafter, Fiennes however is wooden and unreadable. The young Michael Berg (David Cross) is one to watch. He plays his role to perfection, though his character is very awkward indeed. I gave this film a four because although it's thought provoking and well-played, it didn't blow my mind and in terms of personal preference, even though I will definitely be watching it again, I wouldn't rush to buy the dvd.

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Jan 14 2009 00:36 I had read the book years ago and couldn't get over a feeling of unsatisfactoriness then.It was a
love(first)story yoked to the important subject of
the post-war generation's reaction to the Holocaust.
It read like a finely worked legal document(Shlink
had worked as a judge).It showed a perpetrator
(Hannah) who had been more implicated by her
illiteracy than her evil.She was too ashamed to
admit in court that she couldn't read or write.She
similarly left 15 year old Michael because of this
shame.There is also a 21 year age difference-
illicit in our culture-maybe not so in Germany.These are people who are somehow
able to connect love-making to reading.She wants
to be read to from all the works of literature.I think
it was mainly German literature with a smattering
of Russian and Greek(certainly not DHL!). I must
admit to liking Winslet's scrubbed performance
and David Kross was excellent too.Ralph Fiennes
was too wooden but serviceable.The cinematography was excellent(Deakins) and recreated the look and feel of post war Germany. I
think the film would have been done better in
a German-made film with English subtitles as at
times a German actor and English actress seem
wrong.It was chiefly about the second generations
reaction to the actions of the previous generation
and guilt by association:uncles,fathers,mothers,
grandparents.Who are all these people that the
next generation came from and could the younger generation have done things differently? We also
need to remember Gunther Grass revealing late
in his life he'd been a member of the SS youth.He
had already reaped all the honours and only did it
when it was safe to do so.Again the film is worthy
and better than most others but there's a hollowness at it's heart that left me cold. Go and
see Fateless and get at the real subject.

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