The Reader (2008)
Average Rating: 6.4/10
Reviews Counted: 193
Fresh: 118 | Rotten: 75
Despite Kate Winslet's superb portrayal, The Reader suggests an emotionally distant, Oscar-baiting historical drama.
Average Rating: 6/10
Critic Reviews: 42
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 19
Despite Kate Winslet's superb portrayal, The Reader suggests an emotionally distant, Oscar-baiting historical drama.
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Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 197,567
My Rating
Movie Info
Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes star in The Hours director Stephen Daldry's haunting period drama concerning the relationship between a 15-year-old German boy and a mysterious woman twice his age, and the way that it grows doubly complex when the man reencounters the woman years later and discovers a shocking truth about her past. Based on author Bernhard Schlink's best-selling novel of the same name, the film opens on the character of Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) in middle age -- cold, remote,
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Cast
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Kate Winslet
Hanna Schmitz -
Ralph Fiennes
Michael Berg -
David Kross
Young Michael Berg -
Bruno Ganz
Professor Rohl -
Matthias Habich
Peter Berg -
Susanne Lothar
Carla Berg -
Karoline Herfurth
Marthe -
Alexandra Maria Lara
Young Ilana Mather -
Volker Bruch
Dieter -
Burghart Klau??ner
Judge -
Hannah Herzsprung
Julia -
Vijnessa Ferkic
Sophie -
Lena Olin
Rose Mather/Ilana Mathe... -
Jeanette Hain
Brigitte -
Florian Bartholomäi
Thomas Berg -
Friederike Becht
Angela Berg -
Alissa Wilms
Emily Berg -
Frieder Venus
Doctor -
Marie Anne Fliegel
Hanna's neighbor -
Moritz Grove
Holger -
Jürgen Tarrach
Gerhard Bade
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The Reader Trailer & Photos
All Critics (194) | Top Critics (42) | Fresh (121) | Rotten (76) | DVD (8)
Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.
Top CriticIf Winslet carries the complex psychological intrigue of the film on her shoulders, David Kross carries the heart of it on his.
Its issues are infinite and moveable. It's a bold and challenging work.
The trial's outcome leads us into a third act that continues to give renewed, rending meaning to the movie's title.
The Reader is a bold and provocative film and one of the most exquisite of 2008.
Relies too much on coincidence and, in an even more puzzling turn, seems to suggest that illiteracy might be a valid excuse for the worst of human behavior.
The film's exploration of the Holocaust's fallout on subsequent generations is harrowing.
A holocaust movie with a deep, twisting dive into a dense tangle of thorny moral, ethical, situational and emotional issues.
Winslet fashions Hanna as the most banal and mundane of evildoers.
A film that will haunt you for months with its fleeting and subtle examinations on morality, love and guilt.
Manipulative and flawed, but interesting and occasionally moving.
A decades-spanning drama that dives into the slippery human nature of lust, manipulation, retribution and doubt. "The Reader" is a phenomenally tragic story of people eternally connected, never knowing whether it's by true love or unshakable regret.
A British movie of a well-reviewed German novel about issues both moral and bookish.
There's something missing from screenwriter David Hare's adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's Oprah selection, The Reader.
ovaj film mo%u017Ee nakon obavljene misije oti%u0107i u zaslu%u017Eeni zaborav
Daldry's directorial restraint and power perfectly serves David Hare's impressive screenplay and delivers a memorable movie-going experience.
Dismal
En el terreno en que la película triunfa sobre todo es en el de la reflexión, que se impone posteriormente al mero recuerdo de la anécdota que narra.
I have no doubt that the novel makes this movie seem but a glissando of a complex series of emotional notes, but I can say that I was torn up every which way by the end of it.
The film lingers more on Winslet's nudity than on the nature of guilt, and it offers no reason to care for the lumpen criminal or the callow lover.
Audience Reviews for The Reader
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Professor Rohl: If people like you don't learn from what happened to people like me, then what the hell is the point of anything?
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- Hanna Schmitz: It doesn't matter what I feel. It doesn't matter what I think. The dead are still dead.
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- Hanna Schmitz: You don't have the power to upset me. You don't matter enough to upset me.
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- Michael Berg: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love.
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- Hanna Schmitz: It doesn't matter what I feel. It doesn't matter what I think. The dead are still dead.
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- Michael Berg: I can't live without you. The thought of leaving you kills me. Do you love me?
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Foreign Titles
- Der Vorleser (DE)
- El lector (ES)
