3.5/5.0

The Reader is a challenging film that settles for adequacy. It is by no means a bad movie, but strangely lacks the will to do any better.

Based on Bernhard Schlink’s internationally acclaimed novel, the film recounts the brief romance shared by 15-year-old Michael Berg (David Kross) and the older Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet).

As a prerequisite to their lovemaking, Hanna instructs Michael to read to her the literature he is studying in school.

By summer’s end their affair has reached passionate heights, and then one day Hanna disappears. Eight years later, when Michael is a law student attending the Nazi war crime trials, he finds Hanna Schmitz among the defendants.

The story is related mostly through flashbacks, beginning in the mid-90s from the perspective of older Michael, played by Ralph Fiennes. The film hops back and forth between 1958 and 1995, stopping everywhere between to chronicle the lasting emotional fallout of the relationship Michael and Hanna shared that first summer.

With a story as powerful as this, it would seem that the film would revel in the telling.

Instead, The Reader is excessively dry, sticking to the slow pace it sets at the beginning and stubbornly refusing to accelerate. While this pace is engaging at first, it becomes wearing towards the film’s conclusion, and it detracts from the emotional impact of the story’s finale.

Director Stephen Daldry (The Hours) is unable to allow his project to showcase anything other than his actors; the cinematography, score and direction are all cast aside to make room for the acting.

It is no wonder that Kate Winslet has generated Oscar buzz for her role as the enigmatic Hanna Schmitz, and Ralph Fiennes is excellent as the adult Michael.

David Kross, who plays Fiennes’ younger counterpart, is unbelievable. The film does a great job displaying his talents as a young actor, and his scenes during Hanna’s trial are some of the film’s most powerful. Lena Olin is also a stunner in her dual role as a Holocaust survivor and the survivor’s daughter.

Beyond acting, everything else in the film is merely acceptable. In spite of this, however, it is not often that a story so closely linked to the Holocaust manages to separate the people from the events as eloquently as The Reader does ­­­— ­a success due almost entirely to its cast.

A tale of choices made and secrets kept, The Reader is a good film that should be much better.

Reach reporter Robert Frankel at arts@dailyuw.com.