The Reader is a 2008romanticdrama film directed byStephen Daldry, scripted byDavid Hare, adapting the 1995 German novelDer Vorleser byBernhard Schlink, and starringKate Winslet,Ralph Fiennes,David Kross,Bruno Ganz, andKaroline Herfurth. The film tells the story of Michael Berg, aBerlin lawyer who, as a 15-year-old in 1958, has a brief summer love affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz. She abruptly leaves, only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in awar crimes trial stemming from her actions as a guard at aNaziconcentration camp. Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past — a secret which, if revealed, could help her at the trial.
The Reader was the last film for producersAnthony Minghella andSydney Pollack, both of whom died prior to its release. Production began in September 2007, and the film opened in limited release on 10 December, 2008. It received average to favourable reviews from critics, with praise for Winslet and Kross's performances, but with some faults in its screenplay and direction. For her performance, Winslet won theAcademy Award andBAFTA Award for Best Actress, as well as theGolden Globe andSAG Award for Best Supporting Actress.
In 1958, 15-year-old Michael Berg becomes sick on atram ride in an unnamed provincial city. He is helped by 36-year-old tram conductor Hanna Schmitz. Weeks later, Michael has recovered fromscarlet fever and at his mother's insistence, he visits Hanna with flowers to thank her for her help. They proceed to have a secret summer love affair, and Hanna often asks Michael to read to her. They have a brief cycling holiday in the country where Michael starts to notice some oddities in Hanna's behaviour. However, as their sexual relationship deepens it grows more tumultuous, when his attempts to form a deeper connection are rebuffed by her secretive nature. As a good reliable worker, Hanna is soon promoted, whereupon she abruptly quits without explanation. Michael visits Hanna to apologize following an argument, but is utterly befuddled and devastated to find her apartment vacant.
In 1966, Michael is a student atHeidelberg University Law School and observes awar crime trial of several former femaleSS guards accused of letting 300Jewish women and children perish in a burning church during adeath march nearKraków inPoland. Michael is horrified to learn Hanna is one of the defendants. Survivor Ilana Mather provides testimony, including that Hanna forced some of the prisoners to read to her. Hanna admits that she and the co-defendants each chose ten women monthly forextermination atAuschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Ilana's mother Rose testifies that when the church caught fire during a bombing, the guards refused to unlock the doors. The officialSS report stated the guards did not know about the fire until the following day. Hanna reveals the guards in fact kept the doors locked so that the prisoners could not escape. Hanna's co-defendants all state she was in command and wrote the report. Hanna denies this, insisting they agreed on the contents of the report together. When the lead judge asks for a handwriting sample, Hanna quickly condemns herself by admitting she authored the report alone. Recalling their time together, Michael is initially confounded by her testimony, finally deducing that Hanna is deeply ashamed of beingilliterate.
Michael informs his law professor, who states that Michael should inform the court. Deeply conflicted, Michael attempts to visit Hanna in prison, but changes his mind. Hanna receives a sentence oflife imprisonment, while her co-defendants are sentenced to just over four years each.
Michael attempts to move on, though haunted by the memories of a relationship that he cannot put to rest. He marries and has a daughter, however, Michael cannot commit fully to the relationship and grows distant from his family, culminating in divorce and estrangement from his daughter, Julia.
Throughout the 1980s, Michael records himself on tape reading various books and regularly mails them to Hanna. Borrowing the same books from the prison library, Hanna slowly teaches herself to read and write. She starts writing to Michael, but he never replies. In 1988, a prison official requests Michael's help with Hanna'sparole as he has been the only person outside prison to have had contact with her. Michael finally visits Hanna, revealing in the stilted reunion that he has secured her a residence and a job. When Michael arrives for Hanna's release, he is told she hanged herself in her cell and left a crude will asking Michael to give her money to Ilana Mather.
Michael finds Ilana inNew York City, revealing his connection to Hanna and its long-lasting impact. He tells Ilana about Hanna's illiteracy, but she rebuffs this and refuses to forgive Hanna. Michael gives her Hanna's tea tin filled with cash, but Ilana refuses the money. He suggests it be donated to a Jewish literacy organization in Hanna's name and Ilana agrees. She keeps the tin, placing it next to a photograph of her deceased family.
The film ends in 1995 with Michael driving Julia to Hanna's grave, telling her their story.
In April 1998,Miramax Films acquired the rights to the novelThe Reader.[4] Principal photography began in September 2007 afterStephen Daldry was signed to direct the film adaptation written byDavid Hare with Ralph Fiennes cast in a lead role.[5][6] Kate Winslet was originally cast as Hanna, but scheduling difficulties withRevolutionary Road led her to leave the film andNicole Kidman was cast as her replacement.[7][8] However in January 2008, Kidman left the project, citing her recent pregnancy as the primary reason.[8] She had not then filmed any scenes so the studio was able to recast Winslet without affecting the production schedule.[9]
Filming took place in Berlin,Görlitz and on theKirnitzschtal tramway nearBad Schandau and finished in the MMC Studios Köln inCologne on 14 July.[10] Filmmakers received $718,752 from Germany's Federal Film Board.[11] The studio received a total of $4.1 million from Germany's regional and federal subsidiaries.[12][13]
Schlink insisted the film be shot in English rather than German, since it posed questions about living in a post-genocide society that went beyond mid-century Germany. Daldry and Hare toured locations from the novel with Schlink, viewed documentaries aboutthat period in German history and read books and articles about women who had served as SS guards in the camps. Hare, who rejected using avoiceover narration to render the long internal monologues in the novel, also changed the ending so that Michael starts to tell the story of Hanna and him to his daughter. "It's about literature as a powerful means of communication, and at other times as a substitute for communication", he explained.[7] The filming of sex scenes with Kross and Winslet was delayed until Kross was 18.[14] Amerkin was designed for herfrontal nude scenes but she refused to wear it.[15][16]
The primary cast, all of whom were German besides Fiennes, Olin and Winslet, decided to emulate Kross's accent since he had just learned English for the film.[7]Chris Menges replacedRoger Deakins as cinematographer. One of the film's producers,Scott Rudin, left the production over a dispute about the rushed editing process to ensure a 2008 release date and had his name removed from the credit list. Rudin differed with Harvey Weinstein "because he didn't want to campaign for an Oscar along withDoubt andRevolutionary Road, which also stars Winslet."[17] Winslet won theAcademy Award for Best Actress forThe Reader. Marc Caro wrote, "Because Winslet couldn't get Best Actress nominations for both movies, the Weinstein Co. shifted her to supporting actress forThe Reader as a courtesy..." but that it is "...up to [the voters] to place the name in the category that they think is appropriate to the performance", resulting in her receiving more Best Actress nomination votes for this film than the Best Actress submission of herRevolutionary Road performance.[18] Winslet's head-to-head performances also won theGolden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama forRevolutionary Road and theGolden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture forThe Reader.
Entertainment Weekly reported that to "age Hanna from cool seductress to imprisoned war criminal, Winslet endured seven and a half hours of makeup and prosthetic prep each day."[19]
Lisa Schwarzbaum ofEntertainment Weekly writes that "Ralph Fiennes has perhaps the toughest job, playing the morose adult Michael – a version, we can assume, of the author. Fiennes masters the default demeanor of someone perpetually pained."[20]
On December 10, 2008The Reader had alimited release at 8 theaters and grossed $168,051 at the domestic box office in its opening weekend. The film had itswide release on January 30, 2009, and grossed $2,380,376 at the domestic box office. The film's widest release was at 1,203 theaters on February 27, 2009, the weekend after the Oscar win for Kate Winslet.
In total, the film has grossed $34,194,407 at the domestic box office and $108,901,967 worldwide.[3] The film was released on DVD in the U.S. on April 14, 2009, and April 28 on Blu-ray.[21] Both versions were released in the UK on May 25, 2009.[22] In Germany two DVD versions (single disc and 2-disc special edition) and Blu-ray were released on September 4, 2009.[23]
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 63% based on 202 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's consensus states, "Despite Kate Winslet's superb portrayal,The Reader suggests an emotionally distant,Oscar-baiting historical drama."[24] AtMetacritic the film was assigned a weighted average score of 58 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "average or mixed reviews".[25]
Ann Hornaday ofThe Washington Post wrote, "This engrossing, graceful adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's semi-autobiographical novel has been adapted by screenwriter David Hare and director Stephen Daldry with equal parts simplicity and nuance, restraint and emotion. At the center of a skein of vexing ethical questions, Winslet delivers a tough, bravura performance as a woman whose past coincides with Germany's most cataclysmic and hauntingly unresolved era."[26]Manohla Dargis ofThe New York Times wrote, "You have to wonder who, exactly, wants or perhaps needs to see another movie about theHolocaust that embalms its horrors with artfully spilled tears and asks us to pity a death-camp guard. You could argue that the film isn't really about the Holocaust, but about the generation that grew up in its shadow, which is what the book insists. But the film is neither about the Holocaust nor about thoseGermans who grappled with its legacy: it's about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation."[2]
Patrick Goldstein wrote in theLos Angeles Times, "The picture's biggest problem is that it simply doesn't capture the chilling intensity of its source material," and noted there was a "largely lackluster early reaction" to the film by most film critics. Most felt that while the novel portrayed Hanna's illiteracy as a metaphor for generational illiteracy about the Holocaust, the film failed to convey those thematic overtones.[27]
Ron Rosenbaum was critical of the film's fixation on Hanna's illiteracy, saying, "so much is made of the deep, deep exculpatory shame of illiteracy – despite the fact that burning 300 people to death doesn't require reading skills – that some worshipful accounts of the novel (by those who buy into its ludicrous premise, perhaps because it's been declared "classic" and "profound") actually seem to affirm that illiteracy is something more to be ashamed of than participating inmass murder ... Lack of reading skills ismore disgraceful than listening in bovine silence to the screams of 300 people as they are burned to death behind the locked doors of a church you're guarding to prevent them from escaping the flames. Which is what Hanna did, although, of course, it's not shown in the film."[28]
Kirk Honeycutt's review inThe Hollywood Reporter was more generous, concluding the picture was a "well-toldcoming-of-age yarn" but "disturbing" for raising critical questions about complicity in the Holocaust.[29] He praised Winslet and Kross for providing "gutsy, intense performances", noted that Olin and Ganz turn in "memorable appearances", and noted that thecinematographers,Chris Menges andRoger Deakins, lent the film a "fine professional polish".[29] Colm Andrew of theManx Independent also rated the film highly and observed it had "countless opportunities to become overly sentimental or dramatic and resists every one of them, resulting in a film which by its conclusion, has you not knowing which quality to praise the most".[30]
AtThe Huffington Post,Thelma Adams found the relationship between Hanna and Michael, which she termedabusive, more disturbing than any of the historical questions in the movie: "Michael is a victim of abuse, and his abuser just happened to have been a luscious retired Auschwitz guard. You can call their tryst and its consequences a metaphor of two generations of Germans passing guilt from one to the next, but that doesn't explain why filmmakers Daldry and Hare luxuriated in the sex scenes – and why it's so tastefully done audiences won't see it for thechild pornography it is."[31]
When asked to respond, Hare called it "the most ridiculous thing ... We went to great lengths to make sure that that's exactly what it didn't turn into. The book is much more erotic." Daldry added, "He's a young man who falls in love with an older woman who is complicated, difficult and controlling. That's the story."[32]
Special praise went to Winslet's acting. She then swept the main prizes in the 2008/2009 award season, including the Golden Globe, the Critic's Choice Award, and the Screen Actor's Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the BAFTA and the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Several writers noted that her success seemed to have made real her appearance in theBBC comedyExtras, in which sheplayed a fictionalized version of herself desperate to win an Academy Award. In the episode, Winslet decided to increase her chance of winning an Oscar by starring in a film about the Holocaust, noting that such films wereoften awarded Oscars.[34] However, in the fictional film, Winslet played a nun sheltering children from the Holocaust rather than one of its perpetrators. Winslet commented that the similarity "would be funny", but the connection didn't occur to her until "midway through shooting the film ... this was never a Holocaust movie to me. That's part of the story and provides something of a backdrop, and sets the scene. But to me it was always an extraordinarily unconventional love story."[35]
Some historians criticised the film for making Schmitz an object of the audience's sympathy and accused the filmmakers ofHolocaust revisionism.[36]
^Morill, Hannah (3 June 2009)."Kate Winslet, Unscripted".Allure. Archived fromthe original on 28 October 2017. Retrieved28 October 2017. NOTE: Many sources claim that she wore a merkin by quoting only part of this interview. This is the full quote from the printed issue: "Let me tell you, The Reader was not glamorous for me in terms of body-hair maintenance. I had to grow it in, because you can't have a landing strip in 1950, you know? And then because of years of waxing, as all of us girls know, it doesn't come back quite the way it used to. They even made me a merkin because they were so concerned that I might not be able to grow enough. I said, 'Guys, I am going to have to draw the line at a pubic wig, but you can shoot my own snatch up close and personal.'"
^Lindsy Van Gelder.Your Bikini Line, Your Business?,Allure, 26 August 2009: "Kate Winslet joked with Allure about having one made for her (that she didn't wear) inThe Reader,..."
