Review of The Reader (2008) by Patrick M — 15 Jan 2011

Overlong, tedious film with a Kate Winslet performance overrated just because her character ages so much. And her aging doesn't even ring true -- she looks about 30 when her story opens in 1958, and yet we're supposed to believe she was a Nazi 15 years earlier? Then by the film's end, the age gap between her and her former lover (Ralph Fiennes) seems twice as wide as it was during their initial affair.

Meanwhile, the script has so little to say about Nazism that she could have been guilty of some other capital crime and the story would barely need to be changed. Despite lasting over two hours, the film doesn't reveal much about the lead characters' internal lives and they scarcely evolve at all. Their inevitable reunion is put off for decades, just because this breeds more artificial drama.

Me, I found myself wishing Bruno Ganz had been the star instead. It's a marvelous film if you like watching people bathe, though.