"She's wonderful again in Fatherland, perfecting a stare that is somewhere between pity and bottomless scorn as Erika Mann, the writer, theatre performer and strident anti-Nazi campaigner returned to the ruins of Germany with her dad, the Pulitzer prize-winning author Thomas Mann. It's another poetic and incisively layered drama from Polish auteur Paweł Pawlikowski, capping (after Ida and Cold War) a loose trilogy of films charting the chaos and "moral confusion" of post-war Europe with the deftest of touches."
"The drama unfolds in 1949, when Mann travelled to Germany from his home in exile in the US to accept an award on the occasion of Goethe's 200th birthday. East and West Germany have been carved up by the Allies; amid mounting Cold War tensions, the author gives speeches in both to emphasise the unity of German culture in this newly divided landscape. Before all that, though, Pawlikowski gives us a prologue: Mann's son Klaus (August Diehl), in a seemingly terrible state, speaks to Erika over the phone."
"Played with gimlet-eyed intensity by Hüller, Erika also suspects that the visit is a terrible idea. But she agrees to tag along in support of her father, setting the scene for a road trip of sorts between West and East Germany in which family and national trauma are as one. (In this much, at least, Pawlikowski's film is pure fiction; the trip was a source of bitter argument between the pair in real life, and Erika refused to attend.)"
"The author's speech in Frankfurt is met with rapturous appl"
Sandra Hüller plays Erika Mann, a writer and anti-Nazi campaigner, in Fatherland. The film is set in 1949 as Thomas Mann travels from exile in the United States to Germany to accept an award for Goethe’s 200th birthday. East and West Germany are divided by the Allies, and Thomas Mann gives speeches in both regions to stress the unity of German culture amid rising Cold War tensions. A prologue shows Mann’s son Klaus calling Erika in a distressed state, complaining that everything has been wrecked. Erika joins her father despite misgivings, and the journey becomes a road trip between West and East Germany where family trauma and national trauma intertwine.
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