Fatherland

In Fatherland, Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski explores the shambles of national identity and cultural heritage of post-war Germany through a historical moment of one of its greatest literary figures. In the summer of 1949, exiled writer Thomas Mann is asked to return to Germany to accept the prestigious Goethe Prize. With the country divided in two, there is both an award celebration in Frankfurt, and another in Weimar. Insisting on an impartial presence, Mann and his daughter Erika set out on a journey that crosses borders of West and Eastern Germany.

Shot in his trademark black-and-white Academy aspect ratio format, Pawlikowski’s camera hones in on faces and their minute details, a focus that seems almost impossible to achieve within the distractions of saturation. At the picture’s press conference the director spoke of the lack of colour as making an honest deal with the viewer, a particularly apt analogy as his characters in Fatherland discuss Faust and Klaus Mann’s (Thomas’s son, played by August Diehl) Mephisto more than once.

As many of the feature’s scenes take place in social gatherings, Pawlikowski proves that there is an art to observing people as they sit silent and watch, a mise-en-scène of heads and expressions, eyes that are still and those that wander. Each and every face in these crowds feels rich, textured, lined by recent history. Inevitably, one’s gaze is drawn to Sandra Hüller, whether she is on stage translating for her father at a press conference, or sitting in the audience, convinced she spotted her brother in the gallery.

Hanns Zischler plays Mann, the man at the centre of this song and dance, with carefully studied nonchalance, but it is through his daughter’s perception of him that one glimpses behind this veneer of detachment.

A film about fractures, about an intellectual attempt to rebuild without the emotions having been processed, Fatherland offers a precious glimpse into the past and into the human soul.