"The movie confronts Germany's post-World War II trauma in a family road movie centered on three characters: the Nobel Laureate novelist Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler), his daughter and assistant Erika (Hüller), and his son Klaus (August Diehl). The movie kicks off with a bravura five-and-a-half minute locked off single take of Klaus in Cannes, sitting naked on the floor by a bed with a sleeping young man."
"He talks on the phone with Erika, who tries to coax her depressed drug-addict intellectual twin to come on a road trip with her back to Germany as his father accepts the Goethe prize. "When is the last time you felt anything?," he asks."
"The father-daughter relationship at the center of this heady literary movie about the "collapse of Europe," he said, "seems to connect things." While Italian producers initially pitched him a biography of Thomas Mann, he rejected making a biopic. But something in the book triggered the nugget of what would become "Fatherland.""
""There is this little moment, which I use as a starting point to invent a story," he said. "When Thomas goes to Germany, he's in an interesting situation. It rang a bell. Everything's collapsed, everything he believed in. He's trying to regener""
A black-and-white family road movie follows Nobel Laureate novelist Thomas Mann, his daughter and assistant Erika, and his son Klaus. The story begins with a long single take of Klaus in Cannes, speaking by phone with Erika while a sleeping young man lies nearby. Erika urges her depressed drug-addict intellectual twin to join a road trip back to Germany as Thomas accepts the Goethe prize. The film connects personal relationships to Europe’s collapse through complicated characters. Pawlikowski rejects making a biopic while using a small moment from a Thomas Mann-related book as a starting point to invent the story. The father-daughter relationship is presented as a force that connects events and themes.
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