"The Reader" simmers with pain, betrayal

The film adaptation of Bernhard Schlink’s best-selling, semi-autobiographical novel reunites director Stephen Daldry and screenwriter David Hare, who won acclaim for adapting 2002’s "The Hours.” "The Reader” has that same "awards film” gloss and refinement.

Set in Germany, the story jumps from the 1990s to the ’40s and several points in between. But it starts in 1942, when 15-year-old Michael Berg (Kross) gets sick outside a Berlin apartment building and a stranger briskly cleans him up and walks him home.

Once recovered, Michael is sent to thank the woman, Hanna Schmitz (Winslet), a secretive, tightly coiled tram worker. Though she is more than twice his age, they feel a physical attraction that quickly sparks into a passionate affair.

Michael discovers that Hanna loves being read to, so Homer, Chekhov and D.H. Lawrence become foreplay and help Hanna open up emotionally. Still, she suddenly vanishes one day, leaving Michael wounded and confused.

Eight years later, Michael is a law student studying German guilt in the wake of the Holocaust. His professor (the brilliant Bruno Ganz) takes the class to observe a war-crimes trial, and Michael is stunned to see Hanna among the defendants, a group of concentration camp guards accused of murder.

As the trial unfolds, Kross, a German actor making his English-language debut, lets the pain, rage and betrayal of the testimony run riot over his character’s once-sunny face. When Michael realizes Hanna harbors a secret that won’t exonerate her but may lessen her sentence, he must decide whether to reveal it.

Winslet’s pitch-perfect, unsentimental performance anchors the film, and Kross holds his own opposite the five-time Oscar nominee. Ralph Fiennes gives a solid but not spectacular turn playing Michael as a damaged, repressed adult.

Though Daldry’s film comes across as too long, disjointed and detached to achieve greatness, to its credit, "The Reader” asks tough questions and doesn’t give easy answers.

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