Fatherland is a fascinating insight into post-war Germany and those affected by it.
Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland will divide opinions, for some its quiet melancholy will be a poignant consideration of a family and a world emerging from one crisis to face another, for others the quietness may be seen as too slow to develop any real sense of depth or pathos for the two main characters.
Fatherland begins in the summer of 1949 with Klaus Mann (August Diehl) making a telephone call to his sister Erika (Sandra Hüller). Klaus discusses his various dissatisfactions, and Erika invites him to join her and their father, Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler), who after spending years in exile in America is returning to Germany for the first time since the end of World War Two to speak and receive a Goethe Prize. Thomas Mann is the famous German author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature and fled Germany after the Nazis took power in 1933. Klaus says he will think about it.
When they arrive in American controlled Frankfurt, Thomas receives letters stating that he is a traitor to the fatherland which Erika hands to the CIA. At a press conference Thomas is told that he will likely be persecuted in America if he travels to the Soviet controlled Weimar to receive the prize. At the reception afterwards Thomas speaks to the two grandsons of Wagner about helping to reestablish the Bayreuth Festival, which Thomas refuses. Erika speaks to and slaps her ex-husband Gustaf Gründgens who was an actor and a friend of Hermann Göring. Upon checking on her father, Erika is told that Klaus has committed suicide but Thomas is determined to continue their journey.
Fatherland is shot in black and white which adds a sombre feel to the still very present destruction they encounter. Cinematographer Łukasz Żal is again outstanding, not surprising given his previous work on the brilliant Hamnet and The Zone of Interest.
Pawlikowski’s and co-writer Hendrik Handloegten’s script, as above, will be seen as well paced or too slow. Whatever the audience may feel about the pace of the plot, Fatherland is a fascinating insight into post-war Germany and those affected by it.
Hanns Zischler’s performance is inline with the script and measured. Sandra Hüller again delivers an excellent performance with a high count of smoking cigarettes in almost every scene.
Fatherland screens as part of this year’s Adelaide Film Festival and will be released in cinemas in November.
More information about the Adelaide Film Festival is available here:
https://www.adelaidefilmfestival.org
Reviewed by Rob McKinnon
Rating 4 out of 5
Distributor: MUBI
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