Review of The Reader (2008) by Greg L — 13 Feb 2011

It's very well acted and works pretty well as a coming-of-age story, but given that it's trying to be a meditation on collective guilt in the aftermath of the crimes of Nazism and not just the drama of one man's conflicted romantic feelings, that's not necessarily enough.

The Holocaust is the heaviest of subject matter and prime Oscar bait, so any movie about it (well, excepting ones made by Uwe Boll) gets immediate pre-release credibility as a possible Serious Artistic Statement.

Unfortunately not all of them have the intellectual heft or emotional profundity to live up to the hype, and this one falls into that category.