Fatherland review Sandra Huller brings a bayonet of intelligence to Pawe Pawlikowski's taut return

"The setting is 1949 and the celebrated German novelist and Nobel laureate Thomas Mann who fled the Nazis before the war for California exile and US citizenship has returned home, first visiting Frankfurt (now in West Germany) to receive an award named after Goethe, whose birthplace this is. It is Goethe's enlightened civilised wisdom and apolitical artistry Mann will pointedly evoke in his many elaborate speeches."

"Mann, played with withdrawn politeness by Hanns Zischler, is accompanied by his long-suffering grownup daughter Erika (Sandra Huller); he is received with rapturous acclaim and, given his importance, assigned a CIA liaison. But he disconcerts and embarrasses his hosts by expressing his intention to accept a second award in Weimar, where Goethe actually lived, but which is now in the communist East and perhaps tainted by its association with the chaotic Weimar republic that ushered in the Nazis."

"Mann greets the communist apparatchiks' acclaim there with the same diplomatically opaque withdrawal. In this way, Mann evidently aspires to float free from history and in all probability to float free from that postwar America with which he can hardly have less in common to straddle Europe's west and east, to make an appearance in both victorious zones and to avoid a partisan political choice in this homecoming."

"But while this is happening, Erika played with the usual bayonet of intelligence by Huller is an anguish. She deeply misses her adored brother Klaus (August Diehl), who is also a writer in American exile and suffering from depression and drug depend"

A celebrated German novelist and Nobel laureate returns to Germany in 1949 after fleeing Nazi persecution and living in California. He visits Frankfurt to receive a Goethe-named award and delivers elaborate speeches that emphasize enlightened, civilized, and apolitical artistry. He is honored with acclaim and assigned a CIA liaison due to his importance. He then plans to accept another award in Weimar, located in communist East Germany, and responds to communist officials with the same diplomatically opaque restraint. His daughter Erika experiences deep anguish, missing her brother Klaus, who remains in American exile and struggles with depression and drug dependence.

Read at www.theguardian.com