The movie version of Bernhard Schlink's novel delivers: Kate Winslet naked, strong story-telling, fascinating take on German history.

Rating: 8/10 (7 March 2009)

Berlin, 1958. Michael is fifteen when he first meets Hanna, a woman more than twice his age. Nevertheless, they fall in lust and gradually, into some sort of love. Their relationship includes an important element. Michael regularly reads to Hanna. Together they go through the world's literature, from Schiller to Chekhov.
But then, the affair ends abruptly, as Hanna disappears from her apartment. Michael is not going to see her again until ten years later, and it will be in a courtroom. She is accused of killing hundreds of people as a Nazi prison guard.
Director Stephen Daldry sensitively paints a picture of a young boy who doesn't really know where he's going with an unconventional relationship and the ramifications of learning something unbelievable about someone you once loved.
Kate Winslet gives the performance of a lifetime as a woman without remorse. And yet, she is not evil in the slightest. She just shut herself off from what happened, disconnecting herself from her past. "It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what I feel. The dead are still dead," she says. In the courtroom, she seems lost, helpless, almost pathetic. "What would you have done?" she asks the judge, and it's not a rhetorical question.
Meanwhile, Michael has to battle his own demons. He knows something, a piece of information that would exonerate his former lover but can he bring himself to disclose it? Doesn't she still deserve punishment? And who is he to decide? Those are questions that will haunt him for a long time.
Yes, "The Reader" deals with the topic of the Holocaust, but it is not a Holocaust movie. It's just as much a character study, the story of obsessive love, and a tale of coming to terms with the past, personally and collectively.