The Reader( 2008)

TV-MADramaRomance

75%

User
Score

Behind the mystery lies a truth that will make you question everything you know.

Overview

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.

Top Billed Cast

Kate Winslet
Hanna Schmitz
Ralph Fiennes
Michael Berg
David Kross
Young Michael Berg
Lena Olin
Rose Mather
Bruno Ganz
Professor Rohl
Jeanette Hain
Brigitte
Hannah Herzsprung
Julia
Karoline Herfurth
Marthe
Volker Bruch
Dieter Spenz
Alexandra Maria Lara
Young Ilana Mather
Fabian Busch
Hanna's Defense Council
Vijessna Ferkic
Sophie
Susanne Lothar
Carla Berg
Matthias Habich
Peter Berg
Burghart Klaußner
Judge
Sylvester Groth
Prosecuting Council
Jürgen Tarrach
Gerhard Bade
Florian Bartholomäi
Thomas Berg
Moritz Grove
Holger
Kirsten Block
Female Judge
Margarita Broich
Co-Defendant
Marie Gruber
Co-Defendant
Martin Brambach
Remand Prison Guard #1
Carmen-Maja Antoni
Prison Librarian
Heike Hanold-Lynch
Prison Guard
Linda Bassett
Ms. Brenner
Ludwig Blochberger
Student
Benjamin Trinks
Holger's friend

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Review 2Discussion

A review by CinemaSerf

Written by CinemaSerf on Mon Jun 06 2022

David Kross is really effective in this tale of a young boy ("Michael") who encounters "Hanna" (Kate Winslet) as he shelters in her doorway from a rainstorm. In fairly short order, this fifteen year old boy becomes her lover; in return she gets him to read to her. He is soon infatuated and devastated when he turns up at her apartment one day to find her gone. Skip on thirty years or so and he - now Ralph Fiennes - takes over a retrospective of her story as we discover she was tried for being a particularly nasty Nazi prison camp guard and she is sentenced to life imprisonment. Throughout her in...