Words by JANE CROWTHER
Paweł Pawlikowski’s latest film is beautifully calibrated and poignant – and proof that running times do not need to be bombastic to tell a profound story. In just 82 minutes, Fatherland explores big themes of art and legacy while also teasing out conversation points of parental overshadowing, national identity and the small things that break a dam of contained grief. Sumptuous monochrome and academy ratio, it’s a period piece with plenty to say about the 21st century, and a cinematic treat that demands big screen viewing – with the drama of screen curtains closing to accommodate its pleasingly old-school format.
It opens with a phone call between siblings; depressed Klaus (August Diehl) and pragmatic Erika (Sandra Hüller), the adult children of celebrated German writer and egghead, Thomas Mann. Erika wants Klaus to attend a trip their father is about to embark on, Klaus is unsure. The rest of the film tracks the trip in question as Mann (Hanns Zischler) returns to his homeland in 1949 to receive two awards for his work, after fleeing the nation for America during WWII. Erika is his helpmeet; driver, translator, secretary, publicist, stylist. As the duo travel between destroyed Frankfurt and the Weimar communist sector, family tragedy reshapes their experience and their relationship.
Though this ostensibly is a story of a male genius (Mann is a Nobel prizewinner and intellectual), the real focus is Erika, a formidably accomplished woman whose calm calculation snaps during a sharp conversation with a Nazi actor during a party and when drunk former soldiers carouse outside her window. Though she is fluent in multiple languages, a writer and a former actor, her most powerful act comes in gently taking the hand of an old man struggling to process his feelings or forgive himself for narcissism. Though the whole cast is excellent, Hüller is exemplary. The way she holds a cigarette informs an audience, just as the micro twist of her mouth betrays the feelings she doesn’t give voice to. And the recreation of a destroyed post-war Germany is like dreamlike time-travel. Every shot is gorgeous, but a couple of sequences of the Manns driving through bombed, shattered streets and along East German lanes feel like historical gems liberated from long lost archives.
While Mann talks loftily of art and what society should look like, the parallels between a fledgling East German tightening control via autocracy and a Trump-era America are easily found. Recognisable too are the concepts of being on the right side of history and the way that art can illuminate and soothe. Whether a Bach fan or not, the moment one of his pieces plays in a devastated building, is a haunting, healing moment of hope. It transports, just as Pawlikowski’s movie does.
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of MUBI
Fatherland premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival and is in cinemas now
