Ever since winning an Oscar for “Ida” 10 years ago, Paweł Pawlikowski has been a major name in European arthouse cinema. Pawlikowski, who was born in Poland and grew up in England, where he made his first films, now lives in Warsaw again. With “Cold War” (2018), a story about a Polish couple who find and lose each other amidst the turmoil of the post-war Cold War, he won the Best Director award at Cannes eight years ago.
Expectations for his new film, ‘Fatherland,’, were correspondingly high. The film centres on Thomas Mann’s (Hanns Zischler) journey through Germany after the Second World War. His first stop is Frankfurt in the so-called Trizone, where he is awarded the Goethe Prize at St Paul’s Church. He is accompanied by his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller), who also acts as his driver. The second stop is Weimar in the Soviet Zone, as it was known at the time, where he is awarded another Goethe Prize.
In Frankfurt, he receives hate mail and is branded a “traitor” who has abandoned Germany in difficult times. Marlene Dietrich faced a similar fate when she returned to Berlin for the first time. The reception in the East is completely different, where the Minister of Culture, Johannes R. Becher (Devid Striesow), offers him the presidency of the Academy of Arts in East Berlin. Thomas Mann politely declines; he does not wish to choose between the two Germanys and will later settle in Küsnacht on Lake Zurich.
The visit to Germany is overshadowed by the tragedy of Klaus Mann’s (August Diehl) suicide; he had a close relationship with his sister Erika. In the opening scene, we see him lying naked on the floor in front of the bed, whilst the woman with whom he has spent the night silently gets dressed and leaves. This scene already hints at the film’s dilemma: a ceaseless stream of name-dropping that runs like a thread through the entire film. Klaus Mann quotes other authors who took their own lives: Joseph Roth, Walter Benjamin, Stefan Zweig and Ernst Toller. He, too, has lost the will to live.
Later, Thomas Mann meets Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, who ask him for his support in reopening the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. In Arnstadt, Johann Sebastian Bach is dutifully commemorated, with passing references to Nietzsche and Beethoven. Hanns Eisler and Heinrich Mann are also included. And, of course, Gustav Gründgens (Joachim Meyerhoff), Erika’s ex-husband, who is slapped by her – and branded an opportunist and Nazi actor – after explaining to the audience how his association with Hermann Göring came about. Diehl) suicide; he had a close relationship with his sister Erika. In the opening scene, we see him lying naked on the floor in front of the bed, whilst the woman with whom he has spent the night silently gets dressed and leaves. This scene already hints at the film’s dilemma: a ceaseless stream of name-dropping that runs like a thread through the entire film. Klaus Mann quotes other authors who took their own lives: Joseph Roth, Walter Benjamin, Stefan Zweig and Ernst Toller. He, too, has lost the will to live.
“Fatherland” feels like an ambitious educational project aimed at enlightening a European audience about the ambivalent reception Thomas Mann received in post-war Germany. Fittingly, the opening credits list a dozen funding bodies and just as many production companies. Sandra Hüller, dressed entirely in black with an ill-fitting wig and a somber expression, is literally in charge on this tour of Germany. There is not a trace of humour or irony. One wonders wistfully what Billy Wilder might have made of the material.
Pawlikowski’s direction displays assured precision, and Łukasz Żal’s cinematography is excellent and worthy of an Oscar. “Fatherland” falls short because of its screenplay; much of the dialogue sounds as though it is being spoken purely to inform the audience. The fact that Henk Handloegten (co-director of “Berlin Babylon”) is credited as co-writer does not help matters. Historical facts are cheerfully jumbled up. Klaus Mann’s suicide took place several weeks before the Goethe Prize ceremony in Frankfurt. Thomas Mann’s wife Katia had not stayed in the USA, but had joined her husband in Europe and accompanied him on the journey. It was not Erika who drove her father, but his Swiss friend Georges Motschan.
One could certainly do that and call it artistic licence. But one could also describe it as a cinematic deepfake. Many critics were enthusiastic because ‘Fatherland’ plays on all the cultural clichés that spring to mind when thinking of Thomas Mann in post-war Germany. “The highly literary, thematically dense screenplay, full of cultural references (art, poetry and music) … gives us the feeling of visiting the two Germanys in 1949,” as Screen International writes. Variety praises the “objective authenticity” of Pawlikowski’s direction. That’s how it sounds if you take everything the film shows at face value.
Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, one of the most important figures in international cinema, has also set his latest film in a foreign country: contemporary France. In his case, the outcome is far more successful. He had previously filmed in France 13 years ago, with the family drama 'Le passé' (The Past, 2013). In ‘Histoires parallèles’ (Parallel Stories), Isabelle Huppert plays an elderly writer, a rather sharp-tongued woman, who, from her cluttered apartment in Paris’s 10th arrondissement, spies on a neighbour’s flat across the street with the aid of a telescope and uses this as inspiration for her new novel.
She watches Nita (Virginie Efira), Nico (Vincent Cassel) and Theo (Pierre Niney) as they produce sound effects for films in a recording studio, and imagines a wild tale of sex and jealousy. Adam (Adam Bessa), a mysterious young man, not only helps her tidy up the flat, but is also pursuing his own obscure plans. One must be careful not to give too much of the plot away, for the parallel stories Farhadi tells take convoluted paths. The audience is repeatedly confronted with unexpected twists. A film-within-a-film unfolds, playing with leaps in time and shifting narrative perspectives.
As always in Farhadi’s films, the characters are portrayed with psychological precision; there is no need for dramatic events to build tension, as it arises from their relationships with one another. Farhadi cites the sixth episode of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ‘Dekalog’ (in the extended cinema version, ‘A Short Film About Love’) as his inspiration, but also draws on elements from other episodes of the series, such as the murder of the taxi driver in ‘A Short Film About Killing’ (i.e. Dekalog, Five). It is fitting that Kieślowski’s long-time composer Zbigniew Preisner wrote the score for the film.
The way in which Asghar Farhadi interprets Kieślowski and references various motifs from ‘The Decalogue’ is subtly hinted at and fascinating to observe. Many had expected Farhadi to offer a cinematic commentary on Iran, much like Jafar Panahi, who won the Palme d’Or last year with ‘It Was Just an Accident’. The reaction of numerous critics was correspondingly disappointed. But to accuse the film of lacking political relevance is to do an injustice to this cleverly constructed and elegantly staged film. Films do not have to convey messages. It is enough if they leave the viewer with a lasting sense of unease.