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The Reader (2008 film)

The Reader is a 2008 romantic drama film directed by Stephen Daldry, written by David Hare on the basis of 1995 German novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink, and starring Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Bruno Ganz and Karoline Herfurth.

The Reader
Theatrical release poster
Directed byStephen Daldry
Screenplay byDavid Hare
Based onDer Vorleser
by Bernhard Schlink
Produced by
Starring
Cinematography
Edited byClaire Simpson
Music byNico Muhly
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release dates
  • December 12, 2008 (2008-12-12) (United States)
  • February 26, 2009 (2009-02-26) (Germany)
Running time
124 minutes[1]
Countries
  • Germany[2]
  • United States
Languages
  • English
  • German
Budget$32 million[3]
Box office$108.9 million[3]

The film tells the story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a 15-year-old in 1958, has a sexual relationship with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz. She disappears only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a guard at a Nazi concentration 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. Some historians criticised the film for making Schmitz an object of the audience's sympathy and accused the filmmakers of Holocaust revisionism.[4]

It was the last film for producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, both of whom died prior to its release. Production began in Germany in September 2007, and the film opened in limited release on December 10, 2008.

Although The Reader received mixed reviews from the critics, Winslet and Kross received acclaim for their performances; Winslet won a number of awards for her role, including the Academy Award for Best Actress. The film was nominated for several other major awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Plot edit

In 1995 Berlin, Michael Berg watches a train pass, flashing back to a tram ride from 1958. Michael, then 15, feels sick, getting off the tram to walk in the rain. Vomiting beside an apartment building, he is found by tram conductor Hanna Schmitz, 36, who cleans him up and helps him home. Michael is diagnosed with scarlet fever.

Michael visits Hanna with flowers once he is better, and they proceed to have a summer affair. She asks him to read to her from his school books. On a bicycle trip, they visit a church with a choir and Hanna is emotional. Toward the end of summer, Hanna is promoted to the tram's head offices, they argue, she sends him away, and packs her things and leaves. When Michael finds her apartment vacant he is devastated.

Again in 1995, Michael is reserved around women, divorced, and estranged from his daughter.

In 1966, a Heidelberg University Law School student, Michael observes a trial (similar to the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials) of several former SS guards accused of letting 300 Jewish women and children perish in a burning church during the death march near Kraków, Poland. Michael is horrified to see Hanna is one of the defendants. Ilana Mather and her mother Rose give the key evidence. Ilana testifies Hanna had women from the camp read to her in the evenings. Rose testifies that when the church caught fire from a bombing raid, all but her and Ilana died, as the guards locked the doors.

Hanna, unlike her co-defendants, admits Auschwitz was an extermination camp and that she and the others chose 10 women for each month's Selektion. When questioned on the church fire, no one explained why they had not unlocked the doors. The guards' report said they did not know about it until morning. Hanna admitted it was a lie, they had not opened the doors so the prisoners could not escape.

Hanna's co-defendants then all lie that she was in charge, and claim she wrote the report. Hanna denies this, insisting all the guards present agreed on the contents of the report. The lead judge asks for a handwriting sample. Ashamed, she avoids this test by testifying she wrote the report. Watching the trial from the public gallery, Michael realizes Hanna's secret: she is illiterate, and so she could not have read or written it.

When Michael tells his law professor, he tells him his moral obligation is to inform the court. The professor is frustrated with him for not having spoken to Hanna, so he tries to visit her in prison, but cannot face her and leaves her waiting. She gets a life sentence for 300 murder cases, while the other defendants are sentenced to four years and three months each for aiding and abetting. Michael weeps from the gallery.

Years later, Michael puts the books he had read to Hanna on tape and regularly sends them to her in prison. She borrows the same books from the prison library, teaching herself to read and write using Michael's voice. She writes to Michael, gradually with more and more literacy, but he never responds.

In 1988, a prison official contacts Michael, requesting his help with Hanna's transition into society following her release. Initially refusing, he later visits to say he has found her a place and a job. Pleased to see him, she tries to reconnect, but Michael is distant. He asks if she thinks about the past and Hanna asks if he means their past. When he says he means the war, she says that what she feels and thinks does not matter as, "The dead are still dead." Both are left upset.

Michael arrives at the prison with flowers on Hanna's release day, but is told she has hanged herself. She left a crude will, gifting a tea tin with cash and the money in her bank account to Ilana.

Michael finds Ilana in New York City, admitting his connection to Hanna and its long-lasting impact. He tells her about Hanna's illiteracy, but she tells him to seek catharsis elsewhere. Michael tells her what she left her, showing her the tea tin, but Ilana refuses the money. He suggests it be donated to a Jewish literacy organization in Hanna's name, and Ilana agrees he should do it if he wishes. She keeps the tin, as it is like one she once had.

The film ends in 1995 with Michael driving his daughter Julia to Hanna's grave, telling her their story.

Cast edit

Production edit

In April 1998 Miramax Films acquired the rights to the novel The Reader,[5] and principal photography began in September 2007 immediately after Stephen Daldry was signed to direct the film adaptation and Fiennes was cast in a lead role.[6][7] Winslet was originally cast as Hanna, but scheduling difficulties with Revolutionary Road led her to leave the film and Nicole Kidman was cast as her replacement.[8] In January 2008, Kidman left the project, citing her recent pregnancy as the primary reason. She had not filmed any scenes yet, so the studio was able to recast Winslet without affecting the production schedule.[9]

Filming took place in Berlin, Görlitz, on the Kirnitzschtal tramway near Bad Schandau, and finished in the MMC Studios Köln in Cologne on July 14.[10] Filmmakers received $718,752 from Germany's Federal Film Board.[11] Overall, the studio received $4.1 million from Germany's regional and federal subsidiaries.[12][13]

Schlink insisted the film be shot in English rather than German, as 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 about that period in German history, and read books and articles about women who had served as SS guards in the camps. Hare, who rejected using a voiceover 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.[8] The filming of sex scenes with Kross and Winslet were delayed until Kross turned 18.[14]

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.[8] Chris Menges replaced Roger 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 with Doubt and Revolutionary Road, which also stars Winslet."[15] Winslet won the Best Actress Academy Award for The Reader. Marc Caro wrote, "Because Winslet couldn't get Best Actress nominations for both movies, the Weinstein Co. shifted her to supporting actress for The 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 her Revolutionary Road performance.[16] Winslet's head-to-head performances also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for Revolutionary Road and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for The 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."[17]

Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment 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."[18]

Release edit

On December 10, 2008 The Reader had a limited release at 8 theaters and grossed $168,051 at the domestic box office in its opening weekend. The film had its wide 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.[19] Both versions were released in the UK on May 25, 2009.[20] In Germany two DVD versions (single disc and 2-disc special edition) and Blu-ray were released on September 4, 2009.[21]

Reception edit

 
Kate Winslet's performance garnered critical acclaim and earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress, the first of her career after five previous nominations.

Critical response edit

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 63% based on 204 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."[22] At Metacritic the film was assigned a weighted average score of 58 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[23]

Ann Hornaday of The 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."[24]

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote, "You have to wonder who, exactly, wants or perhaps needs to see another movie about the Holocaust 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 those Germans 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 the Los 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.[25]

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 in mass murder ... Lack of reading skills is more 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."[26]

Kirk Honeycutt's review in The Hollywood Reporter was more generous, concluding the picture was a "well-told coming-of-age yarn" but "disturbing" for raising critical questions about complicity in the Holocaust.[27] He praised Winslet and Kross for providing "gutsy, intense performances", noted that Olin and Ganz turn in "memorable appearances", and noted that the cinematographers, Chris Menges and Roger Deakins, lent the film a "fine professional polish".[27] Colm Andrew of the Manx 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".[28]

At The Huffington Post, Thelma Adams found the relationship between Hanna and Michael, which she termed abusive, 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 the child pornography it is."[29]

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."[30]

The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008. Rex Reed of The New York Observer named it the second best film of 2008. Stephen Farber of The Hollywood Reporter named it the fourth best film of 2008,[31] Tasha Robinson of The A.V. Club named it the eighth best film of 2008,[31] and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times placed it on his unranked top 20 list.[31]

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, the Screen Actor's Guild Award, the BAFTA, and the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Several writers noted that her success seemed to have made real her appearance in the BBC comedy Extras, in which she played 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 were often awarded Oscars.[32] 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."[33]

Awards and nominations edit

Award Category Name Outcome
Academy Awards Best Picture Sydney Pollack, Anthony Minghella, Redmond Morris and Donna Gigliotti Nominated
Best Director Stephen Daldry
Best Actress Kate Winslet Won
Best Adapted Screenplay David Hare Nominated
Best Cinematography Roger Deakins and Chris Menges
BAFTA Awards Best Actress Kate Winslet Won
Best Film Nominated
Best Director Stephen Daldry
Best Cinematography Roger Deakins and Chris Menges
Best Screenplay – Adapted David Hare
Broadcast Film Critics Association Top 10 Films of the Year Won
Best Film Nominated
Best Supporting Actress Kate Winslet Won
Best Young Performer David Kross Nominated
Golden Globe Awards Best Director – Motion Picture Stephen Daldry Nominated
Best Picture – Drama
Best Screenplay David Hare
Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Kate Winslet Won
San Diego Film Critics Society Best Actress Kate Winslet Won
Satellite Awards Top 10 Films of 2008 Won
Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Kate Winslet Nominated
Best Director Stephen Daldry
Best Film – Drama
Best Adapted Screenplay David Hare
Screen Actors Guild Awards Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role Kate Winslet Won

References edit

  1. ^ "The Reader (15)". British Board of Film Classification. December 2, 2008. Retrieved June 17, 2013.
  2. ^ a b Dargis, Manohla (December 9, 2008). "Innocence Is Lost in Postwar Germany". The New York Times. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
  3. ^ a b c "The Reader (2008)". Box Office Mojo. December 30, 2010. Retrieved December 30, 2010.
  4. ^ Shipman, Tim (February 15, 2009). "Kate Winslet's Oscar chances hit by The Reader Nazi accusation". The Daily Telegraph. from the original on August 14, 2016. Retrieved November 8, 2017.
  5. ^ Roman, Monica (April 22, 1998). "Miramax books 'Reader'". Variety. Retrieved December 28, 2007.
  6. ^ Fleming, Michael (August 17, 2007). "Kidman, Fiennes book 'Reader' gig". Variety. Retrieved December 28, 2007.
  7. ^ Koehl, Christian (September 14, 2007). "Senator inks rights to 'Reader'". Variety. Retrieved December 28, 2007.
  8. ^ a b c Kaminer, Ariel (December 5, 2008). "Translating Love and the Unspeakable". The New York Times.
  9. ^ Meza, Ed; Michael Fleming (January 8, 2008). "Winslet replaces Kidman in 'Reader'". Variety. Retrieved January 10, 2008.
  10. ^ . Sächsische Zeitung (in German). Archived from the original on July 17, 2020. Retrieved July 15, 2008.
  11. ^ Meza, Ed (October 26, 2007). "'Reader' receives German funds". Variety. Retrieved December 28, 2007.
  12. ^ Meza, Ed (January 8, 2008). "Nicole Kidman quits 'Reader'". Variety. Retrieved January 8, 2008.
  13. ^ "Zur Geschichte der Kirnitzschtalbahn ab 1989" [The history of the Kirnitzschtalbahn from 1989]. RVSOE (in German). Retrieved August 3, 2020.
  14. ^ Clarke, Cath (December 19, 2008). "First sight: David Kross". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 25, 2010.
  15. ^ Thompson, Anne (October 9, 2008). "Scott Rudin leaves 'The Reader'". Variety. Retrieved February 7, 2009.
  16. ^ Caro, Mark (February 8, 2009). "How Kate Winslet outdid herself". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved September 6, 2012.
  17. ^ Labrecque, Jeff (January 30, 2009). "Best Actress". Entertainment Weekly 1032/1033: 45.
  18. ^ Schwarzbaum, Lisa (December 19, 2008). "Review: 'The Reader'". Entertainment Weekly. No. 1026. p. 43.
  19. ^ "The Reader (2008)". DVD Release Dates. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
  20. ^ "The Reader (DVD)". amazon.co.uk. Retrieved March 18, 2009.
  21. ^ . areadvd.de. Archived from the original on March 28, 2009. Retrieved March 31, 2009.
  22. ^ "The Reader". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 10, 2021.
  23. ^ The Reader Reviews. Retrieved March 10, 2021. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  24. ^ Hornaday, Ann (December 25, 2008). "'Reader' Lets Rending Story Speak for Itself". The Washington Post.
  25. ^ Goldstein, Patrick (December 3, 2008). "No Oscar glory for 'The Reader'?". Los Angeles Times.
  26. ^ Rosenbaum, Ron (September 2, 2009). "Don't Give an Oscar to The Reader". Slate.
  27. ^ a b |Honeycutt, Kirk (November 30, 2008). . The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on March 3, 2009. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
  28. ^ Andrew, Colm. "Review: The Reader". Manx Independent. Archived from the original on August 2, 2012.
  29. ^ Adams, Thelma (December 2, 2008). "Reading Between the Lines in The Reader: When is Abuse Not Abuse?". Huff Post.
  30. ^ . The New York Times. December 4, 2008. Archived from the original on February 28, 2009. Retrieved March 11, 2009.
  31. ^ a b c . Metacritic. Archived from the original on January 2, 2009. Retrieved January 11, 2009.
  32. ^ Grabert, Jessica (January 30, 2012). "Extras' Best Episode: Kate Winslet". Cinema Blend. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  33. ^ Rich, Katey (December 10, 2008). "Kate Winslet interview". Cinema Blend. Retrieved December 7, 2014.

External links edit

reader, 2008, film, reader, 2008, romantic, drama, film, directed, stephen, daldry, written, david, hare, basis, 1995, german, novel, same, name, bernhard, schlink, starring, kate, winslet, ralph, fiennes, david, kross, bruno, ganz, karoline, herfurth, readert. The Reader is a 2008 romantic drama film directed by Stephen Daldry written by David Hare on the basis of 1995 German novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink and starring Kate Winslet Ralph Fiennes David Kross Bruno Ganz and Karoline Herfurth The ReaderTheatrical release posterDirected byStephen DaldryScreenplay byDavid HareBased onDer Vorleserby Bernhard SchlinkProduced byAnthony Minghella Sydney Pollack Donna Gigliotti Redmond MorrisStarringKate Winslet Ralph Fiennes David Kross Lena Olin Bruno GanzCinematographyChris Menges Roger DeakinsEdited byClaire SimpsonMusic byNico MuhlyProductioncompaniesMirage Enterprises Neunte Babelsberg Film GmbHDistributed byThe Weinstein Company United States Senator Film Germany Release datesDecember 12 2008 2008 12 12 United States February 26 2009 2009 02 26 Germany Running time124 minutes 1 CountriesGermany 2 United StatesLanguagesEnglish GermanBudget 32 million 3 Box office 108 9 million 3 The film tells the story of Michael Berg a German lawyer who as a 15 year old in 1958 has a sexual relationship with an older woman Hanna Schmitz She disappears only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a guard at a Nazi concentration 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 Some historians criticised the film for making Schmitz an object of the audience s sympathy and accused the filmmakers of Holocaust revisionism 4 It was the last film for producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack both of whom died prior to its release Production began in Germany in September 2007 and the film opened in limited release on December 10 2008 Although The Reader received mixed reviews from the critics Winslet and Kross received acclaim for their performances Winslet won a number of awards for her role including the Academy Award for Best Actress The film was nominated for several other major awards including the Academy Award for Best Picture Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 4 Release 5 Reception 5 1 Critical response 5 2 Awards and nominations 6 References 7 External linksPlot editIn 1995 Berlin Michael Berg watches a train pass flashing back to a tram ride from 1958 Michael then 15 feels sick getting off the tram to walk in the rain Vomiting beside an apartment building he is found by tram conductor Hanna Schmitz 36 who cleans him up and helps him home Michael is diagnosed with scarlet fever Michael visits Hanna with flowers once he is better and they proceed to have a summer affair She asks him to read to her from his school books On a bicycle trip they visit a church with a choir and Hanna is emotional Toward the end of summer Hanna is promoted to the tram s head offices they argue she sends him away and packs her things and leaves When Michael finds her apartment vacant he is devastated Again in 1995 Michael is reserved around women divorced and estranged from his daughter In 1966 a Heidelberg University Law School student Michael observes a trial similar to the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials of several former SS guards accused of letting 300 Jewish women and children perish in a burning church during the death march near Krakow Poland Michael is horrified to see Hanna is one of the defendants Ilana Mather and her mother Rose give the key evidence Ilana testifies Hanna had women from the camp read to her in the evenings Rose testifies that when the church caught fire from a bombing raid all but her and Ilana died as the guards locked the doors Hanna unlike her co defendants admits Auschwitz was an extermination camp and that she and the others chose 10 women for each month s Selektion When questioned on the church fire no one explained why they had not unlocked the doors The guards report said they did not know about it until morning Hanna admitted it was a lie they had not opened the doors so the prisoners could not escape Hanna s co defendants then all lie that she was in charge and claim she wrote the report Hanna denies this insisting all the guards present agreed on the contents of the report The lead judge asks for a handwriting sample Ashamed she avoids this test by testifying she wrote the report Watching the trial from the public gallery Michael realizes Hanna s secret she is illiterate and so she could not have read or written it When Michael tells his law professor he tells him his moral obligation is to inform the court The professor is frustrated with him for not having spoken to Hanna so he tries to visit her in prison but cannot face her and leaves her waiting She gets a life sentence for 300 murder cases while the other defendants are sentenced to four years and three months each for aiding and abetting Michael weeps from the gallery Years later Michael puts the books he had read to Hanna on tape and regularly sends them to her in prison She borrows the same books from the prison library teaching herself to read and write using Michael s voice She writes to Michael gradually with more and more literacy but he never responds In 1988 a prison official contacts Michael requesting his help with Hanna s transition into society following her release Initially refusing he later visits to say he has found her a place and a job Pleased to see him she tries to reconnect but Michael is distant He asks if she thinks about the past and Hanna asks if he means their past When he says he means the war she says that what she feels and thinks does not matter as The dead are still dead Both are left upset Michael arrives at the prison with flowers on Hanna s release day but is told she has hanged herself She left a crude will gifting a tea tin with cash and the money in her bank account to Ilana Michael finds Ilana in New York City admitting his connection to Hanna and its long lasting impact He tells her about Hanna s illiteracy but she tells him to seek catharsis elsewhere Michael tells her what she left her showing her the tea tin but Ilana refuses the money He suggests it be donated to a Jewish literacy organization in Hanna s name and Ilana agrees he should do it if he wishes She keeps the tin as it is like one she once had The film ends in 1995 with Michael driving his daughter Julia to Hanna s grave telling her their story Cast editKate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz Ralph Fiennes as Michael Berg David Kross as younger Michael Berg Bruno Ganz as Professor Rohl a Holocaust survivor Alexandra Maria Lara as Ilana Mather a concentration camp survivor Lena Olin as older Ilana Mather Lena Olin as Rose Mather Ilana s mother Vijessna Ferkic as Sophie Michael s friend at school Karoline Herfurth as Marthe Michael s friend at university Burghart Klaussner as the judge at Hanna s trial Linda Bassett as Mrs Brenner prison official Hannah Herzsprung as Julia Michael Berg s daughter in 1995 Jeanette Hain as Brigitte Michael s girlfriend in 1995 Susanne Lothar as Carla Berg Michael s mother Matthias Habich as Peter Berg Michael s father Florian Bartholomai de as Thomas Berg Michael s brother Alissa Wilms as Emily Berg Michael s sister Sylvester Groth as the prosecutor at Hanna s trial Fabian Busch as the defense lawyer at Hanna s trial Volker Bruch as Dieter Spenz a student in the seminar groupProduction editIn April 1998 Miramax Films acquired the rights to the novel The Reader 5 and principal photography began in September 2007 immediately after Stephen Daldry was signed to direct the film adaptation and Fiennes was cast in a lead role 6 7 Winslet was originally cast as Hanna but scheduling difficulties with Revolutionary Road led her to leave the film and Nicole Kidman was cast as her replacement 8 In January 2008 Kidman left the project citing her recent pregnancy as the primary reason She had not filmed any scenes yet so the studio was able to recast Winslet without affecting the production schedule 9 Filming took place in Berlin Gorlitz on the Kirnitzschtal tramway near Bad Schandau and finished in the MMC Studios Koln in Cologne on July 14 10 Filmmakers received 718 752 from Germany s Federal Film Board 11 Overall the studio received 4 1 million from Germany s regional and federal subsidiaries 12 13 Schlink insisted the film be shot in English rather than German as 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 about that period in German history and read books and articles about women who had served as SS guards in the camps Hare who rejected using a voiceover 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 8 The filming of sex scenes with Kross and Winslet were delayed until Kross turned 18 14 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 8 Chris Menges replaced Roger 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 with Doubt and Revolutionary Road which also stars Winslet 15 Winslet won the Best Actress Academy Award for The Reader Marc Caro wrote Because Winslet couldn t get Best Actress nominations for both movies the Weinstein Co shifted her to supporting actress for The 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 her Revolutionary Road performance 16 Winslet s head to head performances also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for Revolutionary Road and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for The 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 17 Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment 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 18 Release editOn December 10 2008 The Reader had a limited release at 8 theaters and grossed 168 051 at the domestic box office in its opening weekend The film had its wide 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 19 Both versions were released in the UK on May 25 2009 20 In Germany two DVD versions single disc and 2 disc special edition and Blu ray were released on September 4 2009 21 Reception edit nbsp Kate Winslet s performance garnered critical acclaim and earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress the first of her career after five previous nominations Critical response edit On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 63 based on 204 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 22 At Metacritic the film was assigned a weighted average score of 58 out of 100 based on 38 critics indicating mixed or average reviews 23 Ann Hornaday of The 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 24 Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote You have to wonder who exactly wants or perhaps needs to see another movie about the Holocaust 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 those Germans 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 the Los 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 25 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 in mass murder Lack of reading skills is more 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 26 Kirk Honeycutt s review in The Hollywood Reporter was more generous concluding the picture was a well told coming of age yarn but disturbing for raising critical questions about complicity in the Holocaust 27 He praised Winslet and Kross for providing gutsy intense performances noted that Olin and Ganz turn in memorable appearances and noted that the cinematographers Chris Menges and Roger Deakins lent the film a fine professional polish 27 Colm Andrew of the Manx 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 28 At The Huffington Post Thelma Adams found the relationship between Hanna and Michael which she termed abusive 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 the child pornography it is 29 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 30 The film appeared on several critics top ten lists of the best films of 2008 Rex Reed of The New York Observer named it the second best film of 2008 Stephen Farber of The Hollywood Reporter named it the fourth best film of 2008 31 Tasha Robinson of The A V Club named it the eighth best film of 2008 31 and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times placed it on his unranked top 20 list 31 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 the Screen Actor s Guild Award the BAFTA and the Academy Award for Best Actress Several writers noted that her success seemed to have made real her appearance in the BBC comedy Extras in which she played 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 were often awarded Oscars 32 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 33 Awards and nominations edit Award Category Name OutcomeAcademy Awards Best Picture Sydney Pollack Anthony Minghella Redmond Morris and Donna Gigliotti NominatedBest Director Stephen DaldryBest Actress Kate Winslet WonBest Adapted Screenplay David Hare NominatedBest Cinematography Roger Deakins and Chris MengesBAFTA Awards Best Actress Kate Winslet WonBest Film NominatedBest Director Stephen DaldryBest Cinematography Roger Deakins and Chris MengesBest Screenplay Adapted David HareBroadcast Film Critics Association Top 10 Films of the Year WonBest Film NominatedBest Supporting Actress Kate Winslet WonBest Young Performer David Kross NominatedGolden Globe Awards Best Director Motion Picture Stephen Daldry NominatedBest Picture DramaBest Screenplay David HareBest Supporting Actress Motion Picture Kate Winslet WonSan Diego Film Critics Society Best Actress Kate Winslet WonSatellite Awards Top 10 Films of 2008 WonBest Actress Motion Picture Drama Kate Winslet NominatedBest Director Stephen DaldryBest Film DramaBest Adapted Screenplay David HareScreen Actors Guild Awards Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role Kate Winslet WonReferences edit The Reader 15 British Board of Film Classification December 2 2008 Retrieved June 17 2013 a b Dargis Manohla December 9 2008 Innocence Is Lost in Postwar Germany The New York Times Retrieved August 3 2020 a b c The Reader 2008 Box Office Mojo December 30 2010 Retrieved December 30 2010 Shipman Tim February 15 2009 Kate Winslet s Oscar chances hit by The Reader Nazi accusation The Daily Telegraph Archived from the original on August 14 2016 Retrieved November 8 2017 Roman Monica April 22 1998 Miramax books Reader Variety Retrieved December 28 2007 Fleming Michael August 17 2007 Kidman Fiennes book Reader gig Variety Retrieved December 28 2007 Koehl Christian September 14 2007 Senator inks rights to Reader Variety Retrieved December 28 2007 a b c Kaminer Ariel December 5 2008 Translating Love and the Unspeakable The New York Times Meza Ed Michael Fleming January 8 2008 Winslet replaces Kidman in Reader Variety Retrieved January 10 2008 Gestern letzter Dreh fur Der Vorleser Sachsische Zeitung in German Archived from the original on July 17 2020 Retrieved July 15 2008 Meza Ed October 26 2007 Reader receives German funds Variety Retrieved December 28 2007 Meza Ed January 8 2008 Nicole Kidman quits Reader Variety Retrieved January 8 2008 Zur Geschichte der Kirnitzschtalbahn ab 1989 The history of the Kirnitzschtalbahn from 1989 RVSOE in German Retrieved August 3 2020 Clarke Cath December 19 2008 First sight David Kross The Guardian London Retrieved May 25 2010 Thompson Anne October 9 2008 Scott Rudin leaves The Reader Variety Retrieved February 7 2009 Caro Mark February 8 2009 How Kate Winslet outdid herself Chicago Tribune Retrieved September 6 2012 Labrecque Jeff January 30 2009 Best Actress Entertainment Weekly 1032 1033 45 Schwarzbaum Lisa December 19 2008 Review The Reader Entertainment Weekly No 1026 p 43 The Reader 2008 DVD Release Dates Retrieved August 3 2020 The Reader DVD amazon co uk Retrieved March 18 2009 The Reader areadvd de Archived from the original on March 28 2009 Retrieved March 31 2009 The Reader Rotten Tomatoes Retrieved March 10 2021 The Reader Reviews Retrieved March 10 2021 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a website ignored help Hornaday Ann December 25 2008 Reader Lets Rending Story Speak for Itself The Washington Post Goldstein Patrick December 3 2008 No Oscar glory for The Reader Los Angeles Times Rosenbaum Ron September 2 2009 Don t Give an Oscar to The Reader Slate a b Honeycutt Kirk November 30 2008 Film Review The Reader The Hollywood Reporter Archived from the original on March 3 2009 Retrieved April 20 2020 Andrew Colm Review The Reader Manx Independent Archived from the original on August 2 2012 Adams Thelma December 2 2008 Reading Between the Lines in The Reader When is Abuse Not Abuse Huff Post Sex and the Younger Man The New York Times December 4 2008 Archived from the original on February 28 2009 Retrieved March 11 2009 a b c 2008 Film Critic Top Ten Lists Metacritic Archived from the original on January 2 2009 Retrieved January 11 2009 Grabert Jessica January 30 2012 Extras Best Episode Kate Winslet Cinema Blend Retrieved December 7 2014 Rich Katey December 10 2008 Kate Winslet interview Cinema Blend Retrieved December 7 2014 External links editThe Reader at IMDb The Reader at Box Office Mojo The Reader at Metacritic nbsp The Reader at Rotten Tomatoes Portals nbsp Film nbsp United States nbsp World War II nbsp Germany Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title The Reader 2008 film amp 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