Review of The Reader (2008) by Stephen M — 26 Sep 2010

This is why Winslet is considered such a phenomenal actress. In The Reader, she is a brusk and practical German hiding several personal secrets, eking out an impoverished living in 1950s Berlin.

A chance meeting throws together 30-year-old Winslet and a 15-year-old boy (ably played by Kross of the Narnia films). They embark on an intensely pedophilic but brief affair peppered with the boy reading out loud to his mistress. Later, when Kross is a law student, he discovers his ex-lover was a Nazi guard who must stand trial. Both have to decide whether to acquiesce?much like many Germans did in the middle of the Holocaust atrocities?rather than let their shared secrets be known.

So much works in The Reader that the few missteps stand out vividly. Bookending the story with modern scenes?featuring Fiennes?is a technique used in so many other films, the device seems cliché here. The Holocaust is more talked about than shown, and one of the film?s great mysteries is pretty easy to figure out.

Still, director Stephen Daldry (The Hours) finds beautiful ways to shoot scenes that let his characters shine. Winslet and Kross succeed at making The Reader both charmingly romantic and achingly uncomfortable, a pretty amazing balance to strike.