A wonderful Gripping Drama

Rating: 8/10 (31 January 2009)

The Reader is a post World War 2 drama set in Germany. It involves a middle aged woman, Hanna Schmitz, played by Kate Winslet, who works for the transport company but has a dark past and a young boy who falls in love with her. Their meeting was per chance when young Michael Berg stumbled upon her building very sick. Hanna takes care of him and sends him home. Later after he recovers from his illness he comes to thank her, and their affair starts to blossom. Hanna, has a dark history of being a guard in concentration camps, and being involved in mass killings. She's illiterate but has a fascination for literature. She liked being read to. And she requests Michael to always read to her. Eventually she leaves Berlin, after she gets her promotion. Years later, when Michael is in law school, he finds out about Hanna and her past, and despite knowledge which can help reduce her sentence he disclose it during the trial. Hanna gets the maximum sentence amongst the accused, and is sentenced to life imprisonment. Michael, repentant of his earlier actions, starts sending her audio tapes of books, which slowly helps Hanna, learn to read and write.
Its a gripping drama, one of the few which has interested me recently. Kate Winslet and David Kross, the young Michael Berg, have been extraordinary. They eclipse Ralph Fiennes' performance by a mile. Kate Winslet might finally be given the Oscar nod for her role in The Reader, though David Kross, in my mind is equally competent for getting an Oscar nomination, in my mind. Kate Winslet's German accent sounded funny at times, but its easy to overlook such things when you see such a level of performance in front of you. The story is told in a good manner, switching between the present and the past. Little things like the soft musical background score sets the tone of the movie. Kate Winslet does brilliantly to portray an immensely complex character, Hanna Schmitz. She does greatly in distancing herself a bit from the audience, keeps a stone face in front of emotions. A truly great performance.