Fatherland review: Ravishing-looking final part of Pawlikowski’s trilogy falls short

Fatherland

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Director: Pawel Pawlikowski

Cert: 12A

Genre: Drama

Starring: Sandra Hüller, Hanns Zischler, August Diehl

Running Time: 1 hr 22 mins

Immaculate surfaces trump uncertain substance in this snapshot of a battered Germany in 1949. Pawel Pawlikowski’s trademark deployment of sculptural beauty here feels more like tasty trademarked secret sauce than a means of articulation.

Germany is complicated for Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler), the Nobel laureate in literature, returning to his native land after 16 years in American exile. Accompanied by his dutiful daughter, Erika (Sandra Hüller), he travels between West Germany and Soviet-controlled Weimar, accepting honours while a fractured nation competes to claim his cultural legacy.

The journey promises a searching examination of guilt, identity and the unfinished business of Nazism. Too often, however, history becomes an elegant backdrop for portentous exchanges, carefully staged silences and clunky stereotypes. Elliptical editing and sparse dialogue leave psychological connections frustratingly vague.

August Diehl’s Byronic Klaus Mann, the writer’s son, disappears far too early, leaving Sandra Hüller to anchor the film. (No better woman, to be fair.) As Erika, caught between filial loyalty and mounting resentment, she conveys a lifetime of frustration through guarded expressions and snippy exchanges. Her daddy-daughter two-step provides more dramatic force than the broader political parallels the screenplay feints towards.

The film’s most poignant scenes depict two returning refugees struggling to find a shared home and identity following personal and geopolitical catastrophe. Otherwise, the film relies on Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring to provide emotional heft. (No better man, to be fair.)

The postwar setting teases fecund ground for exploring national denial and moral quandaries. But, at 82 minutes, this vignette feels as if it is only clearing its throat for the aria. Accordingly, the film’s truncated treatment of Germany’s divided postwar identity remains curiously schematic. Historical arguments are annunciated, not dramatised.

It seems churlish to complain that Fatherland is the weakest of Pawlikowski’s historical trilogy. Yet this ravishing-looking film, replete with Lukasz Zal’s crystalline cinematographic compositions and academy-ratio framing, is seldom as engrossing as Cold War and never as impactful as Ida.

Fatherland is in cinemas from Friday, October 23rd