A Pᴀssing Love

In 1958, in Germany, 15-year-old Michael Berg (David Kross) meets Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), a mysterious woman nearly twenty years his senior. While Michael is sick on his way home, Hanna helps him. They then embark on a pᴀssionate and secretive relationship, where Hanna asks Michael to read to her before each lovemaking session. From the Odyssey to Miss Chatterley, books are the thread that connects them.

The Reader (2008)

But then one day, Hanna disappears without a trace, leaving Michael heartbroken and bewildered.

The Unforgivable Truth

Years later, when Michael is a law student, he happens to meet Hanna again at a Nazi war crimes trial. It is then that he discovers that Hanna was once a guard at a concentration camp. She was accused of leaving many Jewish prisoners to die in a burning church. When asked why she did not open the door to save them, Hanna remains silent.

Michael is stunned to discover Hanna’s real secret: she cannot read. Fearing that her illiteracy will be exposed, she accepts the charges, even though it means a life sentence.

The Reader (2008)

Redemptive Reading
Years later, Hanna is in prison, old and alone. Michael, now an adult (Ralph Fiennes), sends her tapes of himself reading books. Hanna listens diligently and teaches herself to read and write, word by word, sentence by sentence. But as her prison term nears, Michael visits her and learns that Hanna has committed suicide.

The film ends with Michael taking his daughter to Hanna’s grave, telling her story, as a way to understand the past and face the wounds that cannot be erased.

Lingering Questions

The Reader is not simply a love story, but also a profound work about responsibility, guilt and redemption. It raises difficult moral questions: Can love survive amid the remnants of crime? Can one forgive oneself when the past cannot be changed?

With an introspective performance by Kate Winslet, The Reader is a haunting film that viewers cannot forget.