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Created Jan 14, 2009 07:49AM PST • Edited Apr 27, 2013 11:03AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Germans come to terms with Nazi evil in this spellbinding tale of inter-generational lovers. Searingly honest in its depiction of human weakness, the movie raises profound questions about how so many Germans participated in large scale evil within the heart of the civilized world.

   The story’s power stems from a teenage boy learning about his nation’s heinous past by discovering that his carnal tutor was part of the Nazi war crime machine. His discovery of this shameful aspect of his people’s identity personifies how post-war Germany haltingly faced up to its past.

   The movie has lately come under criticism for being too sympathetic to the Nazi criminal at the heart of the story. Guilty. However, an anti-hero remains a proven plot device for drawing audiences into a difficult story, from which they might just learn a few things. Here The Reader succeeds.

   Bottom Line – The Reader teaches while it transfixes.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Now as masterful a movie actress as has ever bestrode the silver screen, Kate Winslet displays uncanny command of her visage. There are scenes where her precise eyes are the primary instrument of her emotional communication, words unneeded.

   Unlike Meryl Streep, one of her few peers, this great Kate gravitates to roles suffused with sex and anger, as if her standard contract is the opposite of most actresses – requiring that she perform extensively in the nude, taking care to engage in explicit sex along the way. Has any serious actress ever been so sexually open as this Golden Globe winner? ¹

   She far outshines her costars and supporting players. Young German David Kross – her lover as a boy – and Ralph Fiennes – the same character as a grown man – are fine if forgettable.

   The ever elegant Lena Olin graces the movie in a bit part that nonetheless leaves a lasting impression.

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   ¹ A quick postscript on Winslet’s Golden Globe award: nice trick getting her nominated for Supporting Actress, since the part of the camp guard/older lover most assuredly is a lead role.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Stately in its construction, the movie reveals the desires then the history of the characters, deftly drawing the viewer into the story along the way.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    Stephen Daldry, bravo!

12. Play Really Great 4.5

    Star crossed lovers never lose their power to illuminate great societal drama, here the way in which Germans from the Nazi and post-Nazi generations come to terms with themselves and each other. For this we can apparently thank Bernhard Schlink, whose eponymous novel stirred Germany and Oprah alike.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    A children’s choir sings with surpassing beauty. That they do it in a church and cause Hanna the former concentration camp guard to weep in appreciation seems like an Aryan pleasure she should no longer be allowed to enjoy, an instance of the movie’s tendency to afford her more succor than justice would condone.

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    Small visual surprises liven the proceedings, such as how Hanna the grown woman first comes nude to Michael, her young lover. We know this moment must come, but are nonetheless taken off guard by the clever way it is filmed.

    Other visual surprises are subtly unnerving. As Michael enters Hanna’s apartment the first time, the pale white decorations on her front door quickly come into focus. Could they be….stars? Six pointed stars? Yes, a field of six pointed stars, devoid of color. Clearly not an accident of art direction, what are we to make of this? Surely the meaning must be that this former concentration camp guard, once surrounded by prisoners wearing the Star of David, doesn’t even notice that she walks through a door banally decorated with those same stars, just as she fails to recognize the evil perpetrated in her former job.

    And then the movie goes through that same door again and again and again, till the viewer too almost doesn’t see the Jewish stars laid out like military tombstones. Thus the banality of evil gets evoked via cinematography.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.6

    The torrid affair between grown woman and teen boy provides plenty of edginess, while the descriptions of concentration camp horrors retain the power to shock the senses.

17. Sex Erotic 3.5

18. Violence Fierce 1.7

19. Rudeness Profane 2.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    What is it about Germans that led them to serve as concentration camp guards? While hardly the first or last race to engage in ethnic cleansing, the movie suggests a duality of spirit to which Germans are prone. On one hand, Hanna the former concentration camp guard displays an impressive hunger for literature and music, the beauty of which can reduce her to tears. OTOH, she seems devoid of empathy, encountering others as empty vessels with whom she interacts but doesn’t see as fellow humans.

    No doubt traumatized and perverted by her experiences as camp guard, fugitive and lifelong illiterate, Hanna is hardly representative of her race. And as the Holocaust so brutally reinforced, a race is made up of individuals, each with strengths and weaknesses, racial similarities and unique differences. Still, it is not going out on a limb to accept The Reader’s assertion that when presented with organized evil, many ordinary Germans found it second nature to go along.

    This left me impressed with how post-Nazi Germany has faced down the failings of their culture, however imperfectly they have gone about it. Moral courage like that serves as the best insurance that they’ll never again shame their nation or wound humanity as their forebears did.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0