The Reader Reviews

A very touching movie which treat the question of WWII with more subtility than the majority of movies about this period.

I remember, back then, when this movie was released, there was a pretty good buzz about it (Kate Winslet even won her first Academy award for her performance) and I was really eager to check it out. Eventually, even though I thought it would be pretty good, I didn't expect this movie to be that good and, in my opinion, it was easily one of the best movies released in 2008 (which was one of the best years ever). In my opinion, the main topic was just spellbinding and it presented one of the greatest dilemma ever put on the silver screen. Indeed, what would happen if you fell in love with a monster/pyschopatth/pedofile/rapist? Basically, as presented in the movie, it is one of the worst thing that can happen to you because your reason, your conscience or your brain can tell you what's the wrong but the heart doesn't give a sh*t... Since then, this movie didn’t get much love and I should re-watch it to make up my mind for good but, the first time around, I thought it was quite terrific. To conclude, I think it is a great drama and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Kate Winslet's work. .

The film is a series of profound moral dilemmas—while contrived by the author, they are fair questions—that resonate deeply in the 21st Century: The role of guilt in victims, perpetrators, individuals and collectively, as well as justice, forgiveness, redemption, shame and, of course, literacy and its role in Western thought.

All this is a pretty heady mix for a film, but Stephen Daldry (as with "The Hours" ) makes literary conceit play very naturally here. David Hare's screenplay and the remarkable cinematography of the always remarkable Roger Deakins together with a sensitive score by Nico Muhly, this is indeed rarefied film-making.

But the actors are what drag the audience into this story. David Kross is amazing as the young Michael who has to play a range of virginal innocent to wizened and bitter. It's the key role in the film, and we're all lucky he was found to play this role. And the ever confounding Kate Winslet. What an amazing career for this young actress! Running through a list of her credits, she has some of the best performances of the last decade: "Holy Smoke," "Eternal Sunshine…," "Iris," "Finding Neverland," "Little Children." But here she does something very different. Playing what amounts to a monster, we see that they too are human. Not many actresses could bring this off, but it may be her greatest accomplishment to date.

Ralph Fiennes brings a continuity to the work David Kross begins, and there's a brief appearance by Lena Olin who commands the dignity the role deserves.

I'm puzzled at the lukewarm reception to this film. I almost missed seeing it. And it turned out to be one of my favorite and the most heart-rending films of the year. All involved should be very proud.

Beautiful and heart-breaking, Stephen Daldry’s The Reader accomplishes what a lot of recent films dealing with the Holocaust and its consequences haven’t been able to do. It manages to be compelling without making the mistake of thinking that the theme alone should be enough to make it worthy of praise. In recent years, we’ve gotten Fateless, which was curiously unfocused, and The Counterfeiters, a wildly overrated movie that won the Best Foreign Film Academy Award at last year’s Oscar ceremony. There’s a tendency to think that when a film deals with a subject as moving and devastating as the Holocaust it must automatically be good, and that’s a severe mistake: no matter what topic it covers, a drama needs to have a cohesive plot and solid performances to be considered good, and it has to do a thousand times more than that to be considered great. The Reader works wonderfully because there’s no feeling of over-ambition, and all it uses the Holocaust for is to add a nice helping of dramatic potency to its story.

The film is divided into three main acts, the first of which is set in 1958 Germany and depicts the secret love affair between Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), a former Nazi guard, and teenager Michael Berg (David Kross). The second act takes place a few years later, when Hanna is accused for her involvement in the extermination of Jews during her days as a member of the S.S.; at this point, her relationship with Michael has been long over, but their paths cross again because Michael, now a law student, is one of the few pupils in an elite course that allows him to sit in on this trial, in which Hanna and several other Nazi guards are being charged. The third and last act is set in the 1980s, with an adult Michael (played by Ralph Fiennes), and obviously, an even older Hanna (still played by Winslet, with some heavy make-up work), but revealing more about this final act would force me to move into spoiler territory.

The Reader’s first segment is nothing short of great filmmaking. The sense of awkwardness and inappropriateness that the audience would normally feel from watching such an intensely sexual relationship between an adult woman and a teenaged boy is overshadowed here by a mixture of heartwarming tenderness and palpable sexual tension: the scenes are intensely romantic without being manipulative, and they are also sexy without being pornographic, which is certainly a credit to the fearlessness of both Kross and Winslet. As much as one tries to appreciate individual movies for the particular plot lines they follow, nearly everyone has a particular “type of movie” that they gravitate towards, and so, there’s no shame for me in admitting that I would’ve possibly given The Reader a 10 if it had expanded its first act into a full-length motion picture, but hey, that’s not what the filmmakers were going for here, and the movie is certainly not ruined by anything that happens in what comes after this first act.

The sequences featuring the trial are definitely the toughest to watch. Winslet does the impossible: she makes you feel tons and tons of sympathy for a former Nazi. Granted, it helps that the film doesn’t feature any flashbacks to the things she actually did, but one can’t help cringing as we witness Hanna sinking herself with her answers to the judge’s questions, and the moments are even more heart-breaking as they cut to Michael watching helplessly. The film’s “twist” of sorts is revealed during this second act, but to be honest, if you were paying attention during the early scenes, you’ll totally know what it is; however, it’s a nice touch because of the way it’s incorporated into the event that ultimately determines the trial’s outcome. As is so often the case, pride gets in the way of honesty, even in a case in which honesty may have actually been helpful – this is just one of the reasons why The Reader is such a successfully complex and well-made film.

Some may argue it, but I feel that the film’s last act is definitely the weakest. Yes, Winslet is still great under all the make-up in her final scenes, but I feel that this would’ve worked much better as a shorter epilogue than as a sizable segment of the movie. Several scenes involving adult Michael are drawn out, and the sort-of subplot involving his daughter and his divorce are entirely unnecessary. I wonder if the fact that Winslet isn’t in this last act as much as she is in the others is the “reason” why she has, inexplicably, been lumped into the supporting role for this film. Seriously? Hanna and Michael are both main characters, and Winslet should be getting lead actress billing. Then again, if she were, it would make my choice of preference for the best lead actress of the year even more difficult (and it currently is already hard enough as it is, with Anne Hathaway, Melissa Leo and Meryl Streep), so in a way, it’s a good thing, I guess. This is Winslet’s best work since her breath-taking performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and if she doesn’t finally win her overdue Oscar, a great injustice will have been done. I was slightly critical of her acting in this year's Revolutionary Road, not at all because it was bad, but because I didn’t feel she was always on-par with her co-star, but in The Reader, she outshines everyone and everything, and I more than forgive her for any nitpicks I had with her work in the other film. Kross is solid as Michael, bringing a youthful brilliance to his role in the early scenes (and he’s equally as comfortable with nudity as Winslet is) and a deep emotional punch to the trial scenes. Only Fiennes, who did much better work in The Duchess this year, falters slightly as the adult Michael, though that’s probably due more to the film’s wandering nature towards the end.

Carried by Winslet's mesmerizing performance, The Reader is an impressive piece of cinema that works on several levels, as a romance that is both raw and beautiful (if unorthodox), and also as a heart-racing court drama. On a similar line as Boy A, one of 2008's best, Daldry's film features a character who was either fully or partially responsible for a heinous crime and seeks to live a normal life after the fact. Films like that can work only if they achieve the difficult task of getting the audience to feel for the character who committed the misdeed, and surprising as it may sound, The Reader largely succeeds at that.

After seeing The Reader becoming an Oscar Best Picture contender but probably the least favourite to win, my expectations were fairly high because I thought it had to be as good as Slumdog Millionaire and Milk. When I did see The Reader, I thought it was a good film but I was mildly disappointed because I don't really think that The Reader exactly made me feel any emotion for Michael Berg because I personally think that kind of character has been used too many times in a film where characters have just drooled over another one. One thing that every film must have is music but I think that there was a little too much particularly within the first 30 minutes of the film. Don't get me wrong it was well directed, written and produced but I wasn't really that fond of the story. I don't really get what the meaning of the tagline is: "Unlock the mystery." I knew that she was on trial for crime but the problem was I was predicting that there was a deeper mystery within the film that could have made a twist. Also, I was pretty disappointed with the ending of the film. It was a good film but I don't think it deserved a Best Picture nomination. It should have gone to in my opinion Revolutionary Road. Others might have included The Dark Knight, WALL-E, Doubt, Changeling and The Wrestler.


The acting in this film was the best thing about The Reader. Kate Winslet's performance as Hanna Schmitz was an oustanding one but I don't think she should have won the Oscar for that film. She should have won the Oscar for Revolutionary Road instead. I was going with Kate in my predictions for the Oscars before I even saw The Reader but out of the 5 nominees, Meryl Streep was the best. Kate delivers the best female leading performance of the year and of her career in Revolutionary Road. I liked her in that more than Meryl Streep. Since Titanic, Kate Winslet hasn't really shown any real nudity on-screen and realistic sex but in The Reader she becomes more crude than she has ever been. She appeared naked from the top quite regularly especially with the sex scenes in which there were quite a lot of. There aren't many actresses who are willing to expose nudity in a film and Kate Winslet is one of those rare actresses who don't let their naked body bother them while on-screen in front of directors, producers, cinematographers etc. It was rather strange regarding the awards for Kate because she won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in this film but won the Oscar and BAFTA for Best Leading Actress for this film. Well, it is a leading film but I think it was Kate Winslet vs. Kate Winslet because it was like a battle between her performance in The Reader and Revolutionary Road. I liked David Kross as young Michael Berg. He was very brave in this film because he appeared totally naked front and back in sex scenes and while Kate Winslet was naked as well. It was really good acting from both of them because Kate knew he was a man who is 15 years younger than her and Kross is 15 years younger than Kate. I think his acting in the love making scenes and the ways he was being with his family were really good but I couldn't feel very much sympathy or heartbreak within him because of Hanna. The great Ralph Fiennes gave me a better impression of the character and I felt sorry for Michael then because Ralph Fiennes is an actor who never disappoints and can draw real emotion as well as fear regarding other characters he has played in the past. He has been in 3 films in 2008 and he isn't in that many really. He was in In Bruges, The Duchess and The Reader and they were all awesome performances from him.


The directing from Stephen Daldry was good but I am not that fond of him as a director because I absolutely hated The Queen (apart from Helen Mirren's ace performance as our present queen and the disaster that struck Britain hard). He is an actor who tries to get us focused and deep into the character's personalities. In The Reader, I think that Daldry tries to give the audience impressions that they would grow really deep into the film itself and to make the characters lovable and deeply interesting. The script was good but I have seen better scripts. At first after reading the story, I thought it was an original script but after seeing and hearing that it's a novel, I then knew that it was an adapted script.


Overall, The Reader is a good film that in my opinion is rather flawed. My reasons are in my review. The Reader features another outstanding performance from Kate Winslet. The best leading actress performance of the year and of Kate's career is still Revolutionary Road. Out of the 5 Best Leading Actress Oscar nominees, Meryl Streep is the best even though I went for Kate Winslet before I saw the film and before the Oscar ceremony. Ralph Fiennes was good as always and now David Kross has become a force to be reckoned with because of his brave exposure of nudity and his young talent. His performance was good but not amazing. The Reader is a film that is good and disappointing that in my opinion didn't deserve the Best Picture nomination. It robbed it off Revolutionary Road. If not that film then should have been The Dark Knight, WALL-E, The Wrestler, Doubt or Changeling.

"I can't live without you. The thought of leaving you kills me. Do you love me?"

The Reader is one of those motion pictures which feels specifically tailored for a December release. An adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's 1995 international bestseller, this is a mature historical drama laced with nudity, compelling themes, suppressed emotion and a few twists. It's quite telling that producer Harvey Weinstein rushed the film's production to ensure its place in the 2008 Oscar race. At any other time of the year, such a movie would frankly feel out of place. Directed by Stephen Daldry (his first feature since 2002's The Hours), The Reader is blatant Oscar bait, but the makers' overconfidence in their product is palpable from the outset...and the result is closer to a near miss than a rousing success. While Daldry's Oscar-nominated film is brimming with emotion and provocative moral ambiguity in the context of a melodrama, The Reader is an unrelenting journey into dreariness and one-note drama with thinly-drawn characters. This is strictly by-the-numbers, conventional Oscar bait which quickly descends into abject boredom. Not skilful enough to be genuinely engaging, and truly lacking in substance, this is a cold fish of a film which falls short of the greatness for which it strives. It's even strangely detached from emotion when it should've been brimming with poignancy. The Reader is not a particularly bad movie per se...it's just an average, boring one. It's frankly bewildering that this film was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

The mainstay of the story begins in Germany in 1958, when 15 year old Michael Berg (Kross) falls ill on the street and is comforted by a stranger named Hanna (Winslet). Months later, after he overcomes his grave sickness, Michael returns to thank Hanna for her kindness. But the young man finds himself attracted to this older woman who willingly beds the overeager virgin. This brief, sensual, passionate affair combines sex with foreplay during which Michael reads passages of literature to Hanna. It is throughout this section that the film alternates between chapters and sex, sex and chapters. This leads to the inevitable heartbreak when, despite their intense bond, Hanna mysteriously disappears. Eight years later, and Michael is a student at law school. Through a coincidence barely allowable in a movie like this, his law class is given the chance to witness a Nazi war crimes trial...and Hanna is one of the defendants. Michael figures out a secret which would exonerate his former lover, but is too embarrassed to share it. The story unnecessarily stretches into Michael's adulthood (now played by Ralph Fiennes) when he has become a man plagued by relentless regret and shame.

The Reader is notable for its first-rate performances, the handsome photography, and the elegant music. The preceding praise may sound generic, but so is the movie. Production values are admirable, and everything is brilliantly subdued, but nothing pierces, shocks, engages or challenges. The interesting undertones and themes are occasionally compelling, but for the most part everything interesting dissolves into disconcerting blandness.

If there was any real passion or feeling behind it, The Reader might've felt like more than a mere space-filler on the inexorable march towards Oscar night. Despite the best efforts of the three talented main actors and a competent director, The Reader just lies on the screen demanding the audience to care and engage but never offering them much to grasp onto. Daldry also appears to have a difficult time with the film's tonal shifts. The director makes a peculiar choice to paint Michael's raw sexual awakening on a dull palette of bleached, muted colours. Regardless of all the nudity and constant love-making, The Reader is about as sexy as a brick wall. The tone additionally contradicts Kross' openhearted, wholly amorous performance as the smitten teenager. The picture is also structured in a pointlessly choppy and non-linear fashion, losing momentum and focus once the proceedings move beyond the trial. The segments taking place in the '90s lack the foundation of the preceding chapters. A viewer can understand that as an adult, Michael is still obsessed with Hanna, and his obsession isn't healthy, but that's virtually everything we manage to glean from about 40 minutes worth of film. Ralph Fiennes is a fine actor (who also starred in 2008's In Bruges and The Duchess), but his portion of the film is let down by the screenplay.

Reportedly, The Reader is a predominantly faithful adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's book when it comes to major plot points (and it gets points for it), but the devil is in the details. Intricacies and nuances that exist in the novel and which can be presented in the first-person narrative are absent from this more straightforward motion picture.
The first two thirds of The Reader are by far the strongest. These scenes (which chronicle the affair and the impact the revelations about Hanna's past have upon Michael), provide rich drama and pose some troubling philosophical questions, even if Daldry grossly mishandles the material (why he was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for this film is a mystery for the ages). It has to be said that the slow pace of the film also allows an audience to realise the gaping plot holes. (An illiterate person able to work as a ticket checker on a tram?)

As stated previously, producer Harvey Weinstein forced director Daldry to rush the production. At times, this intensified schedule shows in the finished product. A lot of the dramatic transitions aren't as tightly focused as they should be. The giant leaps between timelines are baffling, particularly the initial transition from 1995 to 1958. Character motivations are seldom explored in David Hare's shallow script (also curiously nominated for an Oscar). The characters are therefore presented merely as two-dimensional caricatures. Hanna is just a horny male's fantasy, while Michael is merely a horny teenager. Both of the aforementioned choose to withhold crucial information in fear of embarrassment. As we can't understand the motivations of the characters, we don't understand why Hanna chooses to face a lifetime in prison when a simple piece of humiliating information could soften her sentence. Crucially, we don't care either. A suicide also happens towards the film's dénouement, but why this character chooses to take their life is unknown. Most of these faults are due to the film's faithfulness to its source material, but this doesn't excuse them.
What does work is the stunning cinematography by Roger Deakins and Chris Menges (the latter coming onto the feature after the production schedule was changed by the producer and the former suddenly dropped out due to scheduling conflicts). The cinematographers were nominated for an Academy Award for their great work.

Both Kate Winslet and David Kross commit unequivocally to their roles. Winslet plays the character of Hanna throughout the entire movie; going through a gauntlet of old age make-up in the process. Winslet's Oscar-winning portrayal of Hanna is note-perfect, but she's unable to overcome the thinly-sketched nature of her character - the actress is adrift with no coherent character to grab onto. Kross and Ralph Fiennes are engaging enough, but the character of Michael Berg isn't much more interesting than Hanna; the transition from callow youth to guilt-ridden man never made clear.
In a supporting role, Bruno Ganz is authoritative as the law professor who poses pertinent questions to Michael about the human condition. Hannah Hertzsprung is also marvellous in the small but pivotal role of adult Michael's daughter. The acting across the board is great, but the contrivance inherent in playing this German tale in English for an international audience detracts from its authenticity. It isn't as affecting as, say, The Lives of Others or Downfall.

The weakest addition to the 2008 Oscar race, The Reader is a plodding, meandering drama plagued by a glacially slow, shallow screenplay. Still, there's enough intelligent material here to make it worthwhile as a meditation about the post-World War II implications of the Holocaust upon the German psyche. It also works as a tale of the tragedy suffered by one man because, at a young, vulnerable stage time of his life, he fell in love with the wrong person. While never making excuses for those who committed atrocities in the Holocaust, The Reader becomes the latest Nazi-related feature to question whether redemption is a possibility for a person responsible for monstrous acts. The stylish cinematography, coupled with Nico Muhly's florid, somewhat overbearing score makes this motion picture seem like the type of movie one ought to take seriously. Don't be fooled by the elegant exterior, though, as The Reader never fulfils its promises of relevance and depth. R.I.P. Anthony Mingella and Sydney Pollack.

"I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, forgive its vice. I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love."

6.2/10

Possibly the best of the five movies Oscar nominated for Best Movie in 2008. Leaves you with conflicting emotions for the protagonist played by Kate Winslet (who puts in a stellar performance), who was a Nazi prison guard in a Jewish concentration camp. The movie falls short of perfection in the home stretch. I felt like the film-makers were soft-pedalling the horror of the Holocaust, even if their intention was to put a human face on Winslet's character. Still, any movie that makes me think is worth it's weight in gold.

"O Leitor", mesmo tendo um forte contexto histórico (pós 2ª Guerra Mundial), se propõe a falar de sentimentos. Narra a história de um garoto, Michael Berg, que se apaixona por uma mulher, Hanna Schmitz, já com o dobro de sua idade e que mantém um caso com esta. Com o passar do tempo, ele lê livros para ela (por isso "O Leitor). Anos mais tarde, já há tempos sem vê-la, o garoto, já universitário em Direito, reencontra-a no banco do réu.

David Kross, como o garoto, e Kate Winslet, como a mulher, formam um casal com perfeita compatibilidade em cena. Este primeiro se revela como um competente ator que se completa com o talento já reconhecido de Kate Winlet. Winslet também merece mérito por sua sensível e emocionante atuação. Quando em cena, as câmeras se rendem à sua beleza ofuscante e deixam que ela reine. E como reina.

Os aspectos ténicnos são grandes atrativos. A trilha sonora que embala "O Leitor" é de extrema importância para compor cenas que tocam o coração dos mais chorões, como minha amiga que chorou ao meu lado na metade da sessão. A direção de arte se faz presente e ambienta com exelência até as cenas dos anos mais recentes, o que de fato surpreende.

Stephen Daldry que já dirigiu os inesquecíveis "As Horas" e "Billy Elliot" é o ingrediente principal desta trama. Isso porque ele sabe manipular os acontecimentos e, além do mais, o conjunto técnico, como já diz o nome, é técnica. E o que importa mesmo é se o filme comove, funciona. E mais uma vez, Daldry prova que sabe fazer isso muito bem. Pois "O Leitor" não perde seu clima, tendo em vista que o espectador tende a ficar mais atento à história até o desfecho final.

O que faz deste longa pior que "As Horas e "Billy Eliott" são os momentos finais. Depois da morte de Hanna Schmitz, o filme entrega cenas vagas que culminam num final insatisfatório. Contudo, isto não faz deste um filme ruin. Ao contrário, "O Leitor" é uma obra linda de ver e difícil de esquecer.

''I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, forgive its vice. I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you ended it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love.''

Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.

Ralph Fiennes: Michael Berg

The Reader is one of those diverse films and stories that has the eccentric audacity to be both moving, emotional, historical yet also focusing on aspects such as relationships, justice and forms of love.
Based upon the electrically charged book by Bernhard Schlink and combined with the deliciously crafted screenplay from David Hare and then Director Stephen Daldry combines all the perfect material to give us a wonderful, tragic glimpse of a complex story of love.
With an astounding cast of formidable weight, a script that echoes measures and doses of genius, and locations fitting of a Post-War Germany, The Reader succeeds in being a successful insight into a faceted range of characters. Especially the main two, Hannah Schmitz and Michael Berg, both with completely different personas and a bonding unseen by many, but coming across as rare and tranquil. We have the unlikely bond that presents itself between them in an unusual series of events which brings the pair together, we have the age gap the two have arise, and a love sparked about by a chance encounter. From here The Reader begins in giving us an unusual romance yet proceeds in giving us a story which is in fact deeper and tragic all at the same time.



The story cleverly switches between past and present, in carefully stitched sequences which ultimately tell the tale of the two characters. Hannah is the lonely woman who takes into her affection and confidence the innocent and clever Michael, yet shows a hidden past and secrets which are present, the more you scratch past the surface.
We have an evolution of a relationship, and The Reader contains a series of sexual scenes and naked displays. In spite of any prudish audiences whom may have the pleasure of viewing this, the scenes are modest, beautiful and soaked with the joys of blossoming love.

Kate Winslet as Hannah, gives us an Oscar worthy performance, which now it becomes clear why such a versatile Actress is beginning to get recognition for her abilities. In The Reader Kate not only gives a perfectly delivered accent and speaks with energetic strides of submerging talent, it's her acting with her eyes, her motions and her flawless expressions of awe inspiring deliverance which comes off effortlessly. I still need to see the totally different Revolutionary Road, but The Reader has assured me Winslet is finally going to maintain some of the recognition she deserves.
Her chemistry with David Kross playing the Young Michael Berg, is successfully believable. David Kross appears in his best role and film yet, giving us a Law Student with emotional strains of empathy yet effortlessly telepathically even, manages to make us feel like he feels, he manages to capture the anguish present in the character of Michael. As he begins to read to Hannah stories of intrigue and imagination, we find this relationship isn't just restricted to mindless sex but a deeper constrained bond of love and companionship. This is all heavenly and bold, but obviously we also begin to realise good things don't usually last. as the film progresses loss and tragedy present and rear their heads.
Ralph Fiennes as Michael Berg, shows my favourite Actor in action, and he doesn't disappoint. Ralph excels and soars with the portrayal of a grown up Micheal, whom we also see a performance that exceeds mere words, and emotional expressions which impact the hurt and journey of one man's burden and struggle with his souls secrets and unresolved meanderings. When Ralph begins to become teary eyed we are too, because we've felt the journey with him, we've been every step of the way with this deep individual, we've seen the loss and love he's been endowed with.
Other appearances I feel obligated to mention would be the exceptional Bruno Ganz as a lecturer and an upcoming new actress Karoline Herfurth whom I've seen before in a smaller role of Perfume.



The Reader is one of those films which has the unfortunate premise of being underrated and undervalued by many viewers, due to the fact it's not necessarily mainstream fodder. I'd highly recommend this film, The Reader is a vision of the past and yet a timeless account of a relationship, a bond, and a tragic trial of a woman whom made up for her mistakes. When we find she was previously a Nazi, an SS member, it's not the plain truth being found out, it's the reasons and redeeming qualities that make up for her misdeeds in the past. Ultimately what happens is tragic, it is a cruelly life portrayed, yet it's suffering and beauty echoes far into boundless leaps of eternities embrace.
Michael recording tapes and reading for her, while she is in prison seems to give her a glimmer of hope and something to live for. The Reader should definitely be watched by everyone who appreciates a powerful albeit saddening story of two soul-mates. The fact is The Reader has it's moments of humour and happiness, and like life it's the journey and experience which indeed counts.