The Reader, I haven’t seen The Reader… until just now. 2008 was a big year for Kate Winslet. She was critically acclaimed in both Revolutionary Road and The Reader. Winning 2 Golden Globes for Best Actress – Drama and Best Supporting Actress for each respective film. Unfortunately, the Academy Awards only recognized her for Best Actress in The Reader. I haven’t seen Revolutionary Road, but The Reader was a very deserving win. Her performance was the most acclaimed part of the movie, since the controversial subject matter was polarizing. Oscar nominated director Stephen Daldry is no stranger to it.
Though The Reader was still nominated for Best Picture with producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack both tragically receiving posthumous nominations. The Reader is based on German novel Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink. Like The Graduate or Harold and Maude, Michael Berg is a 15 year old teenager who enters a passionate love affair with the much older Hanna Schmitz. The Reader is very erotic in the first half as the R rating is exclusively for nudity and sexuality. Winslet is no stranger to nudity, but it’s surprising how much of it she commits to. Their relationship is wrong, but the young David Kross is equally worthy of praise as the confused youngster.
Michael reads to Hanna and it’s only years later that we discover the shocking reason behind it. Hanna is revealed to be a former SS guard for the Nazi Party in a trial for war crimes. A sympathetic portrayal of someone involved in the Holocaust is tricky to say the least. Lena Olin has a dual performance as two of the concentration camp survivors. Adolf Hitler actor Bruno Ganz plays a Jewish professor who leads the law program that Michael attends. Though the cast is mostly German, Winslet is convincing as the older German woman keeping a secret. Ralph Fiennes is dependable as an older Michael, but it’s still Kross who gives the more conflicted performance of the two. The Reader is an engaging character study about the power of reading.