The Reader

About The Reader

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.

The Reader is a 2008 romance film directed by Stephen Daldry. The film is filed under complex, tragic, depressing, and cautionary.

Ralph Fiennes takes the lead as Michael Berg, Kate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz, David Kross as Young Michael Berg, and Lena Olin as Rose Mather. It runs 124 minutes and was released in December 2008.

The screenplay is by David Hare. It comes from Mirage Enterprises, Studio Babelsberg, and The Weinstein Company. The film began as a novel. It streams on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads, and Britbox Apple TV channel in the United States.

The Hunger Games, Death Proof, and Marley & Me make useful companions to The Reader, all filed under cynical. TMDB voters put it at 7.5 out of 10 across 3,490 votes and it carries a R rating.