I would say that I did, for the most part, welcome A. O. Scott's recent observations in the Sunday New York Times about the surplus of films, particularly during Academy Award nomination season, that purport to examine, reflect or teach us something about the Holocaust. I thought I would never say this given my reverence for the subject and for films like The Sorry and the Pity, Shoah and The Pianist. Yet I myself having reached a point of fatigue when it comes to these films, at least that's what I thought heading in to see The Reader.

Yet this story is a complex and unusual one that does not involve any heroes or triumphs over evil. It is not really a Holocaust picture at all according to screenwriter, David Hare, who set out along with director Stephen Daldry to make something that was not generic. The film, and the novel upon which is it based written by German lawyer and writer, Bernard Schlink, rather, attempts to explain how the generation of Germans immediately following those who were adults during the Third Reich, comes to terms with that legacy. This examination is complex, morally ambiguous and without easy villains or any sort of absolution. This makes it one of the best films made this year or any year, a devastating, and richly complex masterpiece.

As the film opens, Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) is coldly sending off an overnight date when he is prompted to reflect on what turns out to be his defining teenage experience. As the 15 year old Michael (David Kross) falls ill with what later turns out to be scarlet fever, Hanna (Kate Winslet) a 36 year old woman living in the building where he has stopped, helps him get home. When he returns to thank her, she seduces him and an affair begins. Part of the ensuing ritual of their lovemaking involves Michael reading the books he is studying at school aloud to Hanna. The relationship abruptly ends when Hanna disappears without a word. Years later, as a law student, Michael is taken by a professor to observe a war crimes trial where he recognizes Hanna as one of the defendents. She was a prison guard who was responsible for sending women in her charge to Auschwitz and their deaths. Michael makes a choice about information critical to the trial which ultimately binds him to her once again.

What is both beautiful and devastating about this story is what lies beneath. The book is relatively short, spare in fact, but it is about so much. How emotional damage is passed on, shared. How such damage can have wide ranging consequences. It is also complex story about German guilt, German remorselessness, the "banality of evil" as Hannah Arendt named it and simply the infailibility of human connectedness. This means it takes a superlative cast, including Lena Olin and Bruno Ganz, to stay true to the modesty of the original text by conveying the emotion of events and relationships without voiceovers or lengthy expository dialogue.

As the adult Michael, Fiennes is called upon to do what he does best, "to show you what he is thinking and feeling" according to screenwriter David Hare. Fiennes can brilliantly send of shiver down your spine as he throws up a wall. At the same time, his eyes beckon you to scale it and peer down into abyss of unfathomable depth. Here he is someone who at 15 had no idea, as most of us do not, the difficulty and near impossibility of coming to terms with and moving beyond our personal history. Kate Winslet did joke on Extras about the "Holocaust movie" leading to an Oscar but here is such a performance. Ever since her first turn in Heavenly Creatures she has torn up the screen, breathtaking with her unabashed daring, putting it all out there for the audience to consume. Here she is called upon to hide everything, there is never any invitation to see behind her wall, perhaps, there is nothing there, or the wall is so thick as to be impenetrable. Yet the way she throws herself into this role, as she always does, with a combination of steely determination and grace, injects Hanna with life so that she is neither a Nazi caricature nor a pitiful soul.

Finally this film is also about reading, about books and literature and their failure, ultimately, to save us. Maybe there is also some mourning over the abandonment of the written world in our overwhelmingly visual culture. For this and many other reasons I found myself unable to stop tearing towards the end. I always cry at the horror of that genocide, since I first saw films in 11th grade history class. I can't bear the thought of it. But here I was also crying over books, over the idea that so many people will never know or truly understand what it means to create a world for oneself, to build it and visualize it on one's own without it being shaped and packaged for us. On some level perhaps, this film does dash romantic notions about the redemptive power of reading. Yet, as the end credits rolled and I saw the titles from The Odyssey to David Copperfield to Chekov's The Lady with the Little Dog go by, I just couldn't stop.

The Reader opens December 10, 2008 for a limited release, December 25, 2008 wider and January 9. 2009 nationwide.

Directed by Stephen Daldry; written by David Hare from the novel The Reader by Bernard Schlink; produced by Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, Donna Gigliotti and Redmond Morris; directors of photography, Chris Menges and Roger Deakins; edited by Claire Simpson; music by Nico Muhy; production design by Brigitte Broch. Released by The Weinstein Company. Running time: 123 minutes.

With:Kate Winslet (Hanna Schmitz); Ralph Fiennes (Michael Berg, 1970s-1990s); David Kross (Michael Berg (1950s-1960s); Lena Olin (Ilana Mather/Rose Mather); Bruno Ganz (Professor Rohl) and Alexandra Maria Lara (Ilana Mather, 1960s).