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Should you watch The Reader?

Who it’s good for, who it isn’t, and what’s in it. No ratings, no scores.

The Reader

Film · 2008

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.

The sides of The Reader

  • A teenager's affair with an older woman
  • A war crimes trial years later
  • A secret she keeps at any cost

The Reader is good for you if…

  • you like Kate Winslet as a woman hard to love and hard to judge.
  • you like a story about how postwar Germany faced its past.
  • you like following Michael from a teenager in love to a lawyer still marked by her.

The Reader is bad for you if…

  • you'd rather avoid sex scenes, especially with a teenager.
  • you can't take the Holocaust and shame at the heart of a love story.

About: guilt · shame · memory

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