Michael Berg (David Kross) is a fifteen-year old boy growing up in post-World War II Berlin. One day on his way home from school, he suddenly gets very sick and throws up in the doorway to an apartment building. An attractive woman takes him to her place, cleans him up, and walks him halfway home. Michael is diagnosed with scarlet fever and must spend months in bed. After recuperating, he returns to the apartment of the Good Samaritan with a bouquet of flowers to show his appreciation for what she did. While dressing for work, she catches him looking at her with lust, and he flees in embarrassment. The next time Michael comes to the apartment, she asks him to get some coal from the basement. When she sees him covered with soot, she insists he take a bath. Afterwards, they have sex. It is his first time, and she is the teacher.
Her name is Hanna (Kate Winslet), and she is a fare collector on the tram. She has a very peculiar need to have someone read aloud to her from books. Michael can't understand why this is so appealing to her, but he goes along with it, opening her soul to The Odyssey, Huck Finn, and
Eight years later, Michael is attending law school and is part of a select group of students observing a controversial Nazi war crimes trial. Their teacher (Bruno Ganz) challenges them to observe it as lawyers concerned not with whether an act was wrong but whether it was legal at the time. Michael is shocked to see Hanna sitting with five other middle-aged women who were former concentration camp guards. Their most heinous crime was not allowing Jewish prisoners under their supervision to escape from a church that was bombed; 300 Jews burned to death. But what troubles Michael is that he knows a secret Hanna refuses to share with the court that has shaped her whole life and shamed her more than anything else. He almost goes to visit her in prison to convince her to try to help herself, but he turns back at the last minute. She is sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of release for 20 years.
The Reader is directed by Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours) based on a bestselling novel by Bernhard Schlink. It has been adapted for the screen by David Hare (The Hours,Wetherby, Strapless). In comparison to the many movies dealing with the Holocaust and the Nazis, this one takes a different approach with its distinctive thematic blend of secrets, sex, guilt, and betrayal. The movie wants to make a point about the clash between the generations and the shame, anger, and rage some younger Germans felt about the Nazis, the concentration camps, and the complicity of their parents, teachers, and acquaintances. The law students in this story air their views about the war crimes trial but Michael cannot make a clear decision about his own verdict on Hanna.
Years later, Michael (Ralph Fiennes) is a lawyer who has never quite gotten over the magic and the mystery of his love affair with Hanna. His marriage has failed, and in a meeting with his grown daughter, he apologizes for having been so distant from her as a father. While Hanna is in prison, he visits a concentration camp and wonders how he would have responded to her question to the judge during the trial. Still ambivalent about her, Michael nonetheless decides to send Hanna tapes of him reading more books to her. This startling gift is manna in the wilderness to this isolated, lonely, and tormented woman. Instead of answering his questions, she gives him several more to consider in the closing scenes of this remarkably engrossing film.
Special DVD features include deleted scenes; "Adapting a Timeless Masterpiece: Making The Reader"; a conversation with actor David Kross and director Stephen Daldry; Kate Winslet on the art of aging Hanna Schmitz; A New Voice: a look at composer Nico Muhly; and "Coming to Grips With the Past" - production designer Brigitte.
