The Reader (2008)
Directed by Stephen Daldry
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.
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Unfortunately, instead of hearing the theme from Summer of '42 , we then flash back to 1958, when the teenage Michael (played by the gawky, endearing David Kross) had a furtive love affair with the much older Hanna Schmitz (Winslet), a ticket-taker on the Berlin trolley.
A flawed mix of a kind of German "Summer of '42" with a theatrically bound courtroom drama and aftermath, "The Reader's" lopsided before-and-after structure defeats part of its dramatic impact.
All of this is cloaked in a "Summer of '42" coming-of-age story about a boy's first love and an older woman's last brush with tenderness.
There is a bittersweet element to this, but "Summer of '42" it ain't.
Not just any old fling, though, but the kind where intense physicality is coupled with reserve of feeling to signify profound unspoken anguish (Last Tango in Paris), and where a character is forever emotionally withered by an early encounter (The Go-Between).
Screenwriter David Hare (Plenty, Wetherby) and director Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot) appear to be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the themes and ideas being stroked here.
Screenwriter David Hare (Plenty, Wetherby) and director Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot) appear to be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the themes and ideas being stroked here.
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The film's central dramatic twist is also somewhat unsatisfying, and other films -- like Judgment at Nuremberg and The Night Porter -- have tackled the consequences of Naziism and the intertwining of sex and power in post-war Germany with much greater skill and vision.
Not just any old fling, though, but the kind where intense physicality is coupled with reserve of feeling to signify profound unspoken anguish (Last Tango in Paris), and where a character is forever emotionally withered by an early encounter (The Go-Between).
The quality is there, but the message has already been imparted, to much greater effect, in similar films like Music Box and Apt Pupil.
Screenwriter David Hare (Plenty, Wetherby) and director Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot) appear to be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the themes and ideas being stroked here.
Stephen Daldry ("Eight"/"The Hours"/"Billy Elliot") directs the morose and mostly lifeless drama with great craftsmanship, while photographers Chris Menges and Roger Deakins paint a stylish looking maroonish post-Holocaust look on a Germany that still hasn't settled matters for its second and third generation citizens on its foul deeds of the past by its first generation.
Director Stephen Daldry's first two films ("Billy Elliot," "The Hours") both received multiple Oscar nominations, and this one is attracting some lead-in awards attention, mostly for Winslet.
Like The Hours and his debut film Billy Elliot , he has crafted another film to savor.
Stephen Daldry has directed two very different feature films, “Billy Elliot” and “The Hours,” and earned Oscar nominations for both of them.
Director Stephen Daldry ("Billy Elliot," "The Hours") shifts among three points in time to explore the destructive yet enduring relationship.
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Stephen Daldry directed "The Reader" from a script David Hare adapted from Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel, and they've swapped moral purpose for the artsy tastefulness that made their collaboration on "The Hours" such an attractive wallow.
Screenwriter David Hare (Plenty, Wetherby) and director Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot) appear to be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the themes and ideas being stroked here.
Stephen Daldry follows his Academy Award-winning 2002 film “ The Hours ” with “The Reader,” which is marked by superb performances by Kate Winslet and David Kross, a fine performance by Ralph Fiennes, and a cameo by Lena Olin that’s so searing in its sophistication and directness, just try looking away from her during her brief appearance onscreen.
Stephen Daldry ("Eight"/"The Hours"/"Billy Elliot") directs the morose and mostly lifeless drama with great craftsmanship, while photographers Chris Menges and Roger Deakins paint a stylish looking maroonish post-Holocaust look on a Germany that still hasn't settled matters for its second and third generation citizens on its foul deeds of the past by its first generation.
This reunion between Hare and Daldry has a similar tone to The Hours, as it jumps around the timeframes, offering key details and hinting at other things.
Director Stephen Daldry's first two films ("Billy Elliot," "The Hours") both received multiple Oscar nominations, and this one is attracting some lead-in awards attention, mostly for Winslet.
The Graduate meets Schindler’s List in Stephen Daldry’s earnest, tastefully shot adaptation of Bernhard Schlink’s 1995 partly autobiographical novel.