Middleburg Review: “Fatherland”

Fatherland (Paweł Pawlikowski, 2026) 4½ out of 5 stars

I confess that I have never read any works by German writer Thomas Mann (1875-1955), the 1929 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, though I have had, over the years, a few of them on my bookshelf, such as The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus. I tried at one point to watch Italian director Luchino Visconti’s 1971 adaptation of Mann’s Death in Venice but never made it very far. It is no doubt my loss.

None of this lack of knowledge, however, proves a barrier to my deep appreciation for Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski’s latest movie, Fatherland, which follows Mann and his daughter Erika as they return to their native land in 1949 after many years in exile in the United States. Germany is now a country verys much divided, wrestling with its recent loss in World War II, the genocidal horrors it visited on Jews and others, and the many competing paths down which it could possibly go. Mann has been invited to Frankfurt, in West Germany to receive the prestigious Goethe Prize, and also to Weimar, in the East, for another version of the same award. Many welcome him home, while others view him with deep suspicion.

Pawlikowski—making his first feature since the 2018 Cold War—uses the journey as a vehicle to examine complex questions of memory, culpability, and reconciliation, both within a society and a family. There are no easy answers, nor does he try to supply them. Instead, he asks that we come along for the gloomy ride and make our own decisions. Given that the world is in so many places once again embracing the kind of murderous fascism that once tore Germany and its neighbors apart, we should pay close attention.

Working again in his preferred 4:3 aspect ratio and black-and-white images, Pawlikowski, as always, engages a stellar cast from top to bottom. Hanns Zischler (The Universal Theory) plays Mann with a perfect combination of intellectual arrogance and world-weary dread, coupled with disgust at what remains of his former country (after fleeing the Nazis, he became an American citizen). Sandra Hüller (The Zone of Interest) plays Erika, an artist in her own right (actress and writer), who shares many of her father’s qualities but not the arrogance. She keeps hoping that brother Klaus (August Diehl, A Hidden Life)—also a writer, of the 1936 novel Mephisto—will join them. We see him in the opener, even more depressed than our two main characters, and are not surprised by what later happens.

After the Frankfurt ceremony, Thomas and Erika head across the heavily guarded border into East Germany, where we see that no matter how awful the West may have seemed, it’s much worse under Soviet occupation. Capitalism has many flaws, but the contrast between a nation repairing itself—physically and morally—and one where wounds fester beneath the imposition of ideological purity, is striking. Mann the elder, so quick with the put-downs in Frankfurt, senses the danger of this ostensible utopia and, surprisingly (and disappointingly), holds his tongue. Thus do the mighty allow fascism to persist.

Pawlikowski ends his tale in a ruined church where Johann Sebastian Bach was once Kapellmeister (choir director), father and daughter sitting side by side to listen to an organist play the composer’s signature arpeggios. This music, which is earlier described as something that would make even an atheist believe in God, washes over the pair, temporarily cleansing them of the trip’s ethical grime. The past and present, and maybe future, are bleak, but finding comfort in the occasional beauty of humanity allows hope to bloom. At least for a moment.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Chris Reed is the editor of Film Festival Today. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.