The Reader

Director Stephen Daldry does a fatally respectful take on the acclaimed 1995 novel by Bernhard Schlink about German culpability for the Holocaust. The Reader honors Schlink’s restraint and his struggle to avoid cliché, but neither Daldry nor his screenwriter, David Hare, seem eager to make the material their own. The movie plods grimly through the memories of law professor Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) of his postwar affair with a tram conductress, Hanna (Kate Winslet), who turns out to have been a concentration camp guard. Hanna has a secret that will evoke your pity or cause you to shrug and say, “So what?”