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?

Davis P The Reader (2008) is a very interesting film, unlike any other I've seen. The story focuses on Michael Berg, played by Ralph Fiennes and David Kross (younger Michael). It's about him and Kate Winslet's character, Hanna. When Michael was 15, he meet Hanna and they began an affair, an affair that consisted of sex and reading. Michael would read to Hanna and then they would make love. They did this for a summer and then Hanna left. A few years later, Michael was in law school and was witnessing a trial, a trial that involved Hanna. We learn things about her past through this trial. One thing that I absolutely love about this film, is the acting. The acting is so unbelievably great, especially on Winslet's part, who I believe is one of the greatest actresses Hollywood has ever seen. She delivers such a deeply raw performance, we as the audience feel everything she feels, the same goes for Fiennes and Kross. I just want to give special recognition to Kross, because I absolutely adored him here! Even as a young actor, he gives a very skilled performance. I also liked the writing, it's very well done. I like that, through the writing, we get to know these characters. Overall, it's a very intelligent film and it's recommended

irynavasko No words to describe. Truly masterpiece. Very deep and profound movie.

Shambala_Elephant I hate spoilers, and so I'll avoid revealing too much. The movie is beautifully filmed and acted, and perhaps due to that acting, the character of Hannah Schmitz draws our sympathy despite....Well, she commits more than one act that some viewers find unforgivable. But for all the intensity in the love affair that consumes the first hour of the film, the movie isn't merely about the passion between Michael and Hannah, and while it is partly a coming of age story, it is also about how the two halves of the movie interpenetrate each other, just as the young Michael's rigid, very serious home life counterpoints his more joyful life at school and the past cross pollinates with the present.The second half of the movie, bridged to the first by Michael's enrollment in law school and more conventional coming-of-age experiences that begin to form him into the adult he will become--or WOULD were it not for the reentry of Hannah into his life these eight years later--communicates in flashbacks and images parallel to the first half while alluding to events that happen when Michael is an infant.Perhaps a couple of turning points in the plot are unnecessarily confusing in that twice Hannah receives a promotion at work that she refuses, albeit for a crucial thematic reason: she leaves her factory job with Siemans to work as a guard then (though revealed first in the movie) leaves her job as a tram ticket-taker to go who knows where until, eight years later, she resurfaces in the courtroom. When she has her affair with Michael she is living in the Siemans building--employee housing, I guess. Suffice to say that Siemans was her main employer before and after her tenure as a guard. At any rate, for those who know the basic historical time-line and watch the dates as they appear on the screen, these changes won't be so confusing. In the same vein, Lena Olin plays both the once young survivor who grows up to write the memoir that will expose Hannah AND, 20 years later, her NYC daughter. Giving the movie the benefit of the doubt, we can say that one of its themes is the ineluctability of the past and the quest for closure to it.Like others, I think the chemistry between Hannah/Kate and Michael/David Kross is special, and it might make all the difference in how we receive their relationship. However, some viewers will see her less as 'human' and more as anti-social, debauched, while seeing the older Michael as damaged, but that may not lessen for them the film's impact.