Cynically calculated Oscar bait is rarely as ethically problematic as The Reader, adapted by the director Stephen Daldry and screenwriter David Hare from Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel. Much has already been written about the problems of recent films that require an audience to rethink its perceived archetypes and to accept a Nazi as a sympathetic character. My colleague Kevin Maher, writing in The Times, memorably described the phenomenon as the rise of the “touchy-feely Nazi” film. But here, not only is the protagonist Hanna a former SS Guard, she also, as a woman in her thirties, has a sexual relationship with a child of 15. And whichever way you look at that particular character trait, it's not destined to endear her to the average cinema audience. Talk about sympathy for the Devil.

Like the forthcoming Tom Cruise film Valkyrie, The Reader seeks to humanise the Nazi, but in doing so can't help but devalue the horror of the crimes of National Socialism. Although they are obviously unable to absolve Hanna, played with every ounce of conviction she can muster by Kate Winslet, Daldry and Hare give her the convenient whitewash of victimhood and vulnerability.

A former prison camp guard implicated in the horrific death by fire of 300 women, Hanna is put on trial in the 1960s alongside five of her colleagues. There is a fact about Hanna which, if she chose to admit it, would reveal the other women's claims that she was the ringleader to be lies. But she keeps quiet and as a consequence receives a far more punitive sentence than her co-defendants. But did she do so out of a stoic acceptance of her own guilt and the punishment she deserved, or from the pride and vanity that had prompted her to keep the secret for so long already? From what we already know of Hanna, we tend to assume the latter but it's difficult to know since her past is only ever filtered through the eyes of others and never through Hanna herself.

The one person who guesses the secret is her former child lover Michael Berg, now a bright young law student in a front-row seat for her trial and observing the tidal wave of guilt and self-loathing washing through the German psyche at the time. Should he make public the information that would deny the German judiciary their scapegoat and link him to a woman publicly vilified daily?

Through an overabundance of cross-cutting, Daldry tells the story of Berg as an older man (Ralph Fiennes), now a successful lawyer, who reconnects with Hanna through the tapes of novels he records and sends to her behind bars. The soundtrack swells, the redeeming power of literature works its magic and Hanna embarks on a programme of self-improvement in her prison cell.

It's to the film's detriment that so much time is dedicated to this late period of the story. Winslet's fierce, intensely felt performance is obliterated by an unsuccessful make-up job that fails to age her and instead just makes her look weird and flaky. Fiennes's awkward, buttoned-up version of Michael is difficult to reconcile with the younger, more open characterisation delivered by David Kross. And it becomes increasingly unclear what the film is actually about: personal and national guilt? Romantic trauma? Or the transformative power of the written word?

15, 120mins

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