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The Reader

2008

Stephen Daldry

Kate Winslet, David Kross, Ralph Fiennes, Bruno Ganz ...

7.2

50,107

Drama. Romance Germany after World War II. Michael Berg (David Kross), a fifteen-year-old boy, loses consciousness on his way home from school. Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), a serious and reserved woman twice his age, picks him up and takes him home. A passionate, secret idyll develops between the two, only to be interrupted by Hanna's mysterious disappearance. Eight years later, as a law student, Michael meets her again, but in a situation he could never have imagined. [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Ann Hornaday The Washington Post	"Engrossing, graceful adaptation (...) lucid, absorbing and finally deeply moving"	POS
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"Winslet's fierce, unerring portrayal goes beyond acting, becoming a provocation that will keep you up nights. (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Wesley Morris Boston Globe	"The filmmakers are comfortable showing Hanna's sexual nudity when, really, we need proof of her moral nakedness. Otherwise, what we're told radically alters the meaning of what we see."	NEG
United States	Claudia Puig USA Today	"A slow-moving but absorbing story of sexual awakening and moral dilemmas. (...) Though the effort is uneven, it's a well-acted romance that becomes a less compelling courtroom drama. (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of four)."	POS
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"I can't forgive this film for being so shallow and so obtuse on such a subject (...) It left a very strange taste in my mouth (…) Rating: ★ (out of 5)"	NEG
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"I believe the movie may be demonstrating a fact of human nature: Most people, most of the time, all over the world, choose to go along. We vote with the tribe (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Manohla Dargis The New York Times	"You have to wonder who, exactly, wants or perhaps needs to see another movie about the Holocaust that embalms its horrors with artfully spilled tears and asks us to pity a death-camp guard"	NEU
United Kingdom	Mike McCahill Telegraph	"The revelation of evil not only confounds the characters here; it numbs the film, stifles whatever wayward life it once had in it."	NEG

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