Fatherland
Drama History English
In 1949, German writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika embark on a road trip across a Germany in ruins, from US-dominated Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar.
| Cast: | Sandra Hüller, Hanns Zischler, August Diehl, Anna Madeley, Devid Striesow, David Menkin, Joachim Meyerhoff, Enno Trebs, Theo Trebs, Waldemar Kobus, Daniel Wagner |
|---|---|
| Director: | Paweł Pawlikowski |
| Editor: | Piotr Wójcik, Paweł Pawlikowski |
| Camera: | Łukasz Żal |
All Guild Reviews of "Fatherland"
Sandra Huller Shines in a Haunting Masterpiece of a Divided Germany
Fatherland could loosely be considered a trilogy with ‘Ida’ and ‘Cold War’, even if it’s the first time the Polish auteur has portrayed a version of real-life characters.
Black-and-white frames can be rendered either warm or cool, depending on what you’re going for. Pawel Pawlikowski manages to combine stateliness and intimacy in his signature look, where both those colours are given several shades of grey. As soon as ‘Fatherland’ (Cannes competition) begins, in which unfolds a fraught chapter of the famous author Thomas Mann’s life and times, we know we are back in Pawel territory. It is 1949. Mann (Hanss Zischer), who had fled Nazi Germany for the US, is back, readying for the Goethe prize to be conferred upon him. The film loses no time in setting the context: here is a man who has essentially given up on his country — not motherland; Hitler had turned it into fatherland, a paternalistic, authoritarian, murderous dictatorship — and is to be welcome back at a time when the recently-concluded war has drawn a line separating the East and West.
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