Capping off a year filled with several high profile WWII productions, The Reader succeeds as a confronting tale which focuses on the issues of love, secrecy, and shame in post-Hitler Germany.

Based on the popular yet controversial novel by Bernhard Shlink, The Reader begins in West Germany, 1955, with 15 year old teen Michael (David Kross) in the thralls of a sexual liaison with 36 year old tram conductor, Hanna (Kate Winslet).

The exchanges between the two are simple: they have sex, he then reads to her various books and novels. An at first strictly lustful relationship develops into something deeper.

The awkwardness during their first sexual encounters is palpable: Kross, after all, turned 18 during the production, allowing him to take part in the sexually explicit scenes. Winslet, on the other hand, has appeared nude on screen in several films.

Watching the two go at it can create unease. Not so much in the content being shown, but in the ages of the characters involved. Which begs the question: just what is deemed paedophilic behaviour in cinema; and, how is it in a film such as Towelhead, that the seduction of a teenage girl –although eager – by a grown man is rightfully seen as paedophilic. Yet, switch the gender in The Reader, and all seems fair?

The relationship between the two does not last, after the enigmatic Hanna suddenly disappears, leaving Michael grief-stricken. Fast forward a few years, with Michael now a student in law school. Sitting in on a war crimes tribunal, he is gutted to find his former lover among a half a dozen or so former SS guards, charged with crimes against humanity.

Once again, the film falls on shaky moral ground. At first the viewer is asked to accept a borderline lewd sexual relationship, which manages to pass through the gates of conservative correctness due to the emotion invested in the pairing of Michael and Hanna. Then, it throws another hurdle by dragging Hanna’s Nazi past into the spotlight.  

As a result, many have charged The Reader as being an insensitive work of fiction, which asks its audience to project sympathy upon a Na zi.

But is it really that simple?

Appearing throughout the film is Ralph Fiennes as an older, reflective Michael, who is still coming to terms with mixed feelings for his first love. In essence, Fiennes - all repressed emotion and rigid body language - plays the viewers conscience, manifested on screen. He struggles with the same question that haunts the audience: how can he still care for someone who has committed such atrocities?

Could it be that The Reader shows that all of us are human, no matter what inhumanity we accomplish?

Questions are plentiful, but that is the effect which The Reader has. It forces its viewers to think outside of the box, the caricature, the sorrow. Truthfully, this is no more a WWII film, or holocaust film, then in the exploration of disgrace after an event so monstrously tragic, that feeling emotions other than anger and empathy, will be viewed in contempt.

Yet due to the filmmaking excellence of Stephen Daldry, and the magnificent performances by Kross (in an exceptional film debut), Fiennes, and especially Winslet -who bares both body and soul - The Reader succeeds in bringing fresh vision to important themes.