Fatherland film review: A nation in mourning
Paweł Pawlikowski’s exquisite post-war drama brings his historical trilogy to a moving close
Bagging him Best Director at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Fatherland brings Paweł Pawlikowski’s historical trilogy to a magnificent and moving close, following 2013’s Ida and 2018’s Cold War. Captured in gloriously smoky monochrome by the director’s regular cinematographer Łukasz Żal, the film takes its characters on a poignant, desperately painful journey as it joins Nobel Prize-winning novelist Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) on their return to Germany several years after the Second World War.
Thomas fled Germany in 1933, following Hitler’s ascent to power, and we see him head back in 1949 as something of a national hero. He’s there to receive a Goethe Prize, yet is accused by others of disserting his country during a time of incomparable crisis, and finds himself rubbing shoulders with some truly repellent characters. Thomas is accompanied by the no-nonsense Erika, who is eagerly awaiting the arrival of her beloved brother Klaus (August Diehl), before learning of his suicide. This exquisitely realised film deals deftly with questions of identity, loyalty and nationality, as well as the extreme complexity of post-war Germany, where those who had reluctantly or enthusiastically embraced Nazism are thrown back together with those that resisted, with a party scene presenting some compelling confrontations.
Fatherland is a contemplative and considered, sometimes very quiet film, with beautiful writing throughout from Pawlikowski and screenwriting collaborator Hendrik Handloegten. An inscrutable Zischler (best known internationally for Munich and his work with Wim Wenders) delivers a masterclass in repressed emotion, and there’s lovely, all-too-brief work from Diehl as Klaus, while Hüller is as affecting as ever, particularly in moments of furious release. This is all desperately sad and, at a mere 82 minutes, far too fleeting. Yet not a second is wasted.
Fatherland is in cinemas from Friday 23 October; main picture: Agata Grzybowska.