In 1949, Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika embark on a fraught speaking trip through post-war Germany.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Paweł Pawlikowski
Starring: Hanns Zischler, Sandra Hüller, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, Anna Madeley
Road movies tend to stick to a tried and tested formula. Two disparate individuals embark on a journey together, usually bickering as they utilise planes, trains and automobiles, only to find that they have more in common than they could have imagined. Paweł Pawlikowski's Fatherland is a road movie that puts a father and daughter in a car, but here the tension isn't so much between the two central protagonists (though that certainly is present); rather it is with the country they are travelling through, a homeland they no longer entirely recognise.
Like the director's earlier Ida and Cold War, Fatherland is a black and white, academy ratio drama set in post war Central Europe. The setting is 1949 Germany, where the writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) has returned after living in exile in the US since 1933. Accompanying Thomas is his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller), a multi-hyphenate talent who acts, writes and races cars, but whose primary role now is as her father's assistant, translator, and ironically, speech writer.
Much like post-war Germany itself, Fatherland is split in two halves. The first half sees Thomas and Erika travel to Frankfurt in West Germany to accept a new award named in honour of Goethe, who was born in the city. In the film's second half, they move onto Weimar in East Germany, where yet another prize named after Goethe awaits.
For Thomas, this raises the tricky question of where his homeland now lies in this divided nation. Are East and West equally German? Can Thomas even call Germany his home after spending so much time away? Visiting both sides carries professional, reputational and existential risks for the author. If he only accepts the award in the West he will be accused of betraying half of his country, while indulging the East Germans could result in loss of his US citizenship.
Thomas feels it is greatly important to respect both sides, so much so that he declines to cancel his trip after learning of the death of his son, the writer Klaus Mann (August Diehl), who took his own life. This greatly upsets Erika, who was close to her brother, and there is an unspoken tension between the father and daughter for the rest of the trip.
There is much left unspoken in this quiet film, as Pawlikowski relies on the faces of his two leads, along with some dreams and hallucinations, to suggest what they might be feeling at any given moment. Zischler plays the role like a diplomatic ambassador who is careful not to offend two opposing parties, while Hüller gives the more emotional performance, Erika's face increasingly appearing on the verge of tears.
Cinematographer Łukasz Żal creates striking and stark images of a nation in ruins, the characters often dwarfed by post-war rubble and the remnants of once grand architecture. It is in one such setting that this frosty film finally warms up, as Thomas and Erika sit and listen to an organist playing Bach in a bombed church. In Thomas's face we finally see an expression of emotion as his country offers something to feel proud of.
Fatherland is in UK/ROI cinemas from October 23rd.
