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The Reader (2008)

R12/10/2008Drama, Romance2h 4m
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Behind the mystery lies a truth that will make you question everything you know.

Overview

The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.

Top Billed Cast

  1. Cast 1

    Ralph Fiennes

    Michael Berg

  2. Cast 1

    Kate Winslet

    Hanna Schmitz

  3. Cast 1

    David Kross

    Young Michael Berg

  4. Cast 1

    Lena Olin

    Rose Mather

  5. Cast 1

    Bruno Ganz

    Professor Rohl

  6. Cast 1

    Jeanette Hain

    Brigitte

  7. Cast 1

    Hannah Herzsprung

    Julia

  8. Cast 1

    Karoline Herfurth

    Marthe

  9. Cast 1

    Volker Bruch

    Dieter Spenz

David Kross is really effective in this tale of a young boy ("Michael") who encounters "Hanna" (Kate Winslet) as he shelters in her doorway from a rainstorm. In fairly short order, this fifteen year old boy becomes her lover; in return she gets him to read to her. He is soon infatuated and devastated when he turns up at her apartment one day to find her gone. Skip on thirty years or so and he - now Ralph Fiennes - takes over a retrospective of her story as we discover she was tried for being a particularly nasty Nazi prison camp guard and she is sentenced to life imprisonment. Throughout her i...