Winslet's Oscar-winning performance.

Rating: Null/10 (27 May 2009)

Quite by coincidence I watched two Nazi-themed movies back-to-back, this one and "Valkyrie." While they are quite different movies, together they offer some very interesting insights into Nazi Germany in the 1940s and following years as war criminals went to trial.
This one is edited in such a way that it jumps back and forth in time, but the early part is in 1958 when David Kross as the Young Michael Berg is seen very sick, at what turns out to be scarlet fever, and is helped by a stranger. The stranger happens to be Kate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz, a basic, sturdy German woman who works as a ticket taker and change maker on the city transportation line.
We are also introduced early to Ralph Fiennes as the adult Michael Berg in modern times. He is a lawyer and as the movie unfolds we learn his back-story. We see the young Michael in law school, and later by chance encountering Hanna again in the 1960s in a courtroom.
This is a fictional story, but is a plausible one. Winslet is just perfect as the German woman. There is considerable nudity in this film but all in done in context with the characters and is not offensive. The critic Ebert has an excellent review of the story and its meaning, regarding taking responsibility for what we see and participate in.
SPOILERS FOLLOW: When young Michael returns in 1958 months later to Hanna's apartment, now well, all he wanted to do was thank her for having helped him and cleaned him up before he went home that day. But Hanna is lonely and takes the opportunity to start a torrid sex affair with this 15-year-old boy (the actor was actually 18). This lasted the summer, and Michael went off to Hanna's at any chance he could. The result was always the same, but soon Hanna made him read to her each time before they got into bed. We find out Hanna never learned to read and write, and in the 1940s took a job with the Nazi SS as a guard, and in 1966 she and 5 other women were at trial for murder. That she participated in choosing imprisoned Jews for execution was lost on her, it was just her job. Michael as a law student witnessed the trial, and during Hanna's 20-odd years in prison sent her tapes he made, reading books for her, but never visited her. Through this she learned to read and write, but could not face getting out of prison and working in the real world as a 70-something woman. She hung herself the day she was to get out.