Movie review: ‘The Reader’

By Sarah A. Peterson | February 27, 2009

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Kate Winslet after winning the Oscar for best actress for her role in 'The Reader.'
McClatchy Tribune

Kate Winslet has never been one to shy away from shedding her clothes for the camera, and “The Reader” is no exception.

As lovers Hanna and Michael, Winslet and the surprisingly well-endowed David Kross spend a fair share of their screen time together sans clothing.

As a boy of fifteen, Michael first meets the thirtysomething Hanna in 1958, just after vomiting outside her door.

Their affair is quick and intense, lasting only a summer. Hanna wastes no time schooling him in the art of lovemaking; her only request is that he read to her both before and after sex.

At summer’s end, however, Hanna is gone without a trace, and Michael is left to ponder over the loss of his first love.

Eight years later, as a chain-smoking young law student, Michael comes face to face with Hanna, now in her forties, in a courtroom as she and five other women stand trial for Nazi war crimes.

The atrocities of the Holocaust are trotted out as Hanna willingly submits herself to interrogation and eventual imprisonment, taking with her a secret she finds more shameful than any act she committed as a Nazi guard.

“The Reader” is a haunting, melancholy film that does not seek to answer any of the disturbing questions it raises. Hanna makes no apologies. “The dead are still dead,” as she later tells Michael.

Oscar winner Winslet is an emotional powerhouse here, delivering a performance that is both quiet and devastating.

Ralph Fiennes plays Michael as a middle-aged adult adequately enough, but his stiff formality is rather tedious to watch when compared with Kross’s searing portrayal of innocence not so much lost as forgotten.

In the end, the character of Hanna Schmitz remains as elusive and mysterious to Michael (and the audience) as on the day he first meets her, even as her soul and her sins are laid bare in the courtroom for all to see.

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