'Fatherland': a study in disconnection

Fatherland isn’t like other movies — at least not like most of the movies we see these days. Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida and Cold War) hovers somewhere between realism and carefully honed style. He seldom squeezes his characters into suffocating close-ups. But Pawlikowski, who isn't afraid to film in black and white, shouldn't be considered a pure stylist; his movies are rooted in substance. In Fatherland, Pawlikowski follows a 1949 journey famed author Thomas Mann made to Germany, returning to a country he had left in 1933, escaping Hitler's rise. Every image in Fatherland seems to have been calculated to create an atmosphere that reflects the disorientation Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter (Sandra Huller) experience in a country they no longer consider home. But Mann was at home in the German language, and he tries to use his stature to advance an optimistically lofty view of the possibilities for a new Germany, one steeped in cultural achievement. Mann arrives in…

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