Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

cwade22 Powerful film! Decisions Michael made were disappointing in that he could've SAVED Her! A hug. Telling the court Hanna could barely write and couldn't read. Why would she be so selfish or proud to go without honesty in that moment, to take the fall, to never see how far and deep She and Michael could've gone, as to not reveal her illiteracy? Michael was young and felt peer pressure to hate Her, but He could've saved Her in that court room. Modern day, Americans call anybody that disagrees with liberal ideology a Nazi or fascist. They will shout down free speech and call anybody a Nazi. But do they even know who the nazis were? I doubt Hanna was even a member of the NASDP. SS Guard, but illiterate?! I highly doubt an illiterate person would be a member of the Nazi party. Most people don't realize that detail. You can be a camp guard but not a Nazi. You can be a 16 year old WAFFEN SS soldier fighting in battle against the red army, but not even a member of the NASDP. Most Americans get their American version of the war. Russians and Brits get there versions. They're all different. Most Americans think all Germans were evil nazis. There are uneducated video games with "Nazi zombies" but where is the accurate history? Germany, there are laws that ban the imagery of swastika. Video game developers can't even add the symbol in the game. It's history and very important to be documented. I'm Half Black and I want to see swastikas in WW2 video games and other documentations. How will we see the past accurately? How will we discern good from bad? Learn from mistakes? Again, most young American liberal minded types will call anything and anybody a Nazi. I'm half black, and they'll call me a Nazi before seeing my skin tone. This is what happens when free speech is stifled and when guilty feeling governments repress historic symbols like the swastika from even video games, or old WAFFEN SS uniforms. How can people demand progress if they hide the past? How can people correct mistakes if they can't see what they were? This is what happens when the German government bans historic documents, and hinders understanding of even their dark and shameful past. I'm from the same city where Dr. Martin Luther King jr was killed. My city doesn't hide that. They have a museum. They remind people. What I see happening in Europe where free speech is being stifled, it's only setting the world up for more of the bad from history. I'm mentioning this because it correlates to the guilt and fear Michael felt in that courtroom from speaking the TRUTH to save the Woman HE LOVED out of fear of backlash from the angry victims and others in that courtroom. People he might've relied on as Clients. I understand the reasons, but it's always sad to see the TRUTH die in fear. Even if it's to save a former SS camp guard. I think most people can relate to the connection Michael and Hanna Had. When I saw Hanna teaching Michael how to make love with Her, I envied Michael! The pictures of female SS camp guards aren't very flattering. Most were unattractive. Only one was young and beautiful, Irma Grese! Aside from Her, all the female SS guards were scary looking. Maybe Kate winslett was an accurate portrayal of a female SS camp guard, but maybe not. I'll just say, if they looked like Her, I'd willingly go to camp. I knew the outcome of Hanna. I knew When Michael visited her how things would end. He could've hugged her. Maybe he wasn't ready to re connect. I'm surprised there were no flashback scenes to the 1940's. Most other stories would've included visualizing those times. The main detail I couldn't believe was how an adult living in Germany could be ILLITERATE! Wow! I guess I don't know everything about the Germans from that war. And I've done years of research, more than the average American, regarding that war and the Military factions of Nazi Germany. I wanted Michael to save her, but it didn't happen. I couldn't help but fall in Love with Hanna. She was very lovable, despite her past. When She said she only remembered the past at trial, I guess it's possible her past wasn't emulated in her when Michael met Her. He Saw Her goodness. I think everybody that calls Anybody a Nazi, and stifles free speech should watch this film. The film left me with more questions than answers, but that's okay. I'm thinking. If only everybody could think and remember and learn from the past mistakes. And learn from what works. Hanna didn't teach me how to make love with a Woman, but She made me see the goodness in Her and how everybody can be both good and bad. We all have choices to make. CHOICES! Not talking about her Choices, but choices in general. What's the right choice?

qetzalita There were certain moments while watching this film, where I couldn't stop thinking ''Oh, God really?''. Since the first minutes in, you can notice the rush: three minutes and you have the first sex scene, and twenty minutes after that, you begin with the breaking-up part. The way scenes are sequenced don't let you enjoy them not even a little bit. This broken way to tell the story, ruins everything else, that only can be saved by Winslet's performance. Also, the absurdity of dialogs, (sometimes turning a little cringy to hear the whole conversation), can't just get away. I suppose people actually like The Reader, because it ''moves'' with a 'human topic' that can't be forgotten, but there's a moment after you hear it that much in movies, books and everything else, that you have to look beyond it: you try to find structure, form and technique. This movie doesn't work due to its lack of proper ways to be narrated and its pretentious 'pseudo-philosophical' exagerations about important topics like guilt and moral values, just far away from true human nature and compassion; I talk about the last scene when the writer/jew/surviver says the horrors that happened to the Jewish people were the worst thing that has happened ever, (but logically, that's not true, people still suffer and had suffered before all along human history, and giving that importance to this, avoids total human empathy, not even close to reality).I read somewhere that this movie is actually a good film-adaptation of the book, so I can't imagine how painfully must be to read it.

merelyaninnuendo The ReaderThe innocence and the selfless act behind it is the key and the makers were aware of it and narrows it down to it and brings out the best from the book gaining passion, attention and love from the viewers. Stephen Daldry despite of possessing such a beautiful script fails to project it on screen convincingly which makes the audience switch seats on picking a side, for the writing and adaptation is equally powerful on the other side. As these features require, the performance is not compromised on any level by Kate Winslet; she is brilliant, and also Ralph Fiennes from the supporting cast. The Reader has a powerful yet beautiful concept as we all are aware, but also the adaptation and the editing which provides enough space and range to the characters and the actors to flaunt themselves but what's indigestible is the execution and it doesn't pay well in the end.

classicsoncall Wow, I don't know what to make of this picture. It's so good as a fictional story that it feels like it could be a true one. It presents many moral dilemmas, not the least of which is it's treatment of Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) as almost a sympathetic character when in reality she was something of a monster. During her trial, Hanna uses a standard defense used by many former Nazi defendants who stated that they were merely doing their job in whatever capacity they were employed. In one respect, one could almost make the case that there was an element of mental illness involved in her make up, particularly when she comments on why she didn't allow the prisoners in the burning church an opportunity to escape and survive. There's that, and Hanna's overwhelming obsession to keep her illiteracy a secret, to the extent of taking the fall for the other women on trial with her who may have had even more culpability, if that were even possible.I'd like to say that Kate Winslet deserved her Best Actress Win for the picture but I haven't seen any of the other films her competition appeared in. Strictly speaking though, Winslet's performance arcs through all the ranges of human experience one can imagine and presents a thoroughly conflicted character. Ralph Fiennes also turns in a worthy performance, and I would have to concur with another reviewer who felt that the character Michael Berg may indeed have lived a wasted life. His attempt at rehabilitating Hanna in her prison cell may have seemed noteworthy, but one wonders how much of it was done out of compassion and how much out of guilt.What probably appalled me most about the story was when the five women on trial with Hanna all received a mere sentence of four years and three months for their role as concentration camp guards. Even if one were to apply some sort of moral equivalency to their role along side Hanna, the idea that Hanna received a life sentence made their punishment seem minor by comparison. All because their feigned indignation made Hanna out to be the leader of the group, when in fact, any one of them could have expressed some humanity during the church incident that the others might have fallen in line with.