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The Reader (2008)

2008 124 min Dec 10, 2008

Storyline

The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.

Release DateDecember 10, 2008
Runtime124 minutes
Ratings
(9 votes, average: 2.44 out of 5)
Directors

Trailer

Reviews

75
James Berardinelli
The Reader is closer to a near miss than a rousing success but, on balance, this is still worth seeing for those who enjoy complexity and moral ambiguity within the context of a melodrama.
70
Kirk Honeycutt
An engaging period drama. But German postwar guilt is not the most winning subject matter for the holiday season.
67
Lisa Schwarzbaum
The film is notable for its nice performances, its handsome photography, and its very active music. If the preceding praise sounds generic, so is the movie.
63
Kyle Smith
Although the script works in a couple of pages of collegiate-level ethical debate about "the question of German guilt," what the movie is really interested in is the question of German sex. So think of it as "Schindler's Lust."
60
Newsweek
David Ansen
The Reader can feel stilted and abstract: the film's only flesh-and-blood characters spend half the movie separated. But its emotional impact sneaks up on you. The Reader asks tough questions, and, to its credit, provides no easy answers.

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