Fatherland in The one-sided political debate excitement....A comissar WHAT BEGINS as a style.' (Philip French, without suspense or
as in the early press conference, his father. At other times there scenes. The dream sequences, heavy-handedness even - for which employ paranoid chase Drittemann eventually meets images of a gesturing father, images alongside enigmatic example, the party in West Molesworth/miners' picket or in the late scene where is an awkwardness, seem laborious. Berlin or the broadcast by the commissioning Ken Loach, perhaps Britain's best known socialist film maker - is no stranger to controversy off stage before even one public first feature film for eight years - despite Fatherland being his work. His TV productions, A Allen's Perdition was hounded around, or censorship of, his Question of Leadership and The theatre production of Jim companies. Recently, his Price of Coal, were never
Drittemann asks for more time road move. This is effective at Drittemann, isolated as he many an existential German 'natural' aspects of Western culture. For example, when times in making us rethink pressed to sign a recording melancholic protagonist of as he is unaccustomed to moves through Western contract in West Berlin, thinking of himself as a landscapes, evokes the commodity. 13 SON 1863 SON 1867- then you may have to wait some Fatherland the first collaboration ICA cinema isn't your local and independent cinema near you, experience of what can happen reworking of his script for Reds Trevor Griffiths, who wrote performance. Fatherland can at the screenplay, also has direct least be seen, but if London's between Loach and Griffiths, you don't have a progressive for the multi-million dollar to radical scripts, with the Hollywood production. time to see it.
Socialist Outlook No 1 May/June 1987 the crushing of one human spirit synthesis of the personal and the Stalinism as represented here in catharsis. Fatherland avoids easy sensitive way — script, camera tension; there is no moment of should leave its audiences with political, the past, present and father and son reunion. Here, international machinations of future, myth and reality. The questions it poses, and Philip answers to the more difficult plenty to think about as they together in an extraordinary and editing working with an French's derogatory remark The scene which perhaps works most forcefully is the are handled in a supremely about a 'one-sided political resonances from different debate' notwithstanding, devastating effects of the contradictions in uneasy strands in the film come intensity that holds the leave the cinema • and the West (commodification the reunification of Germany; the nature of repression in the oppositional cultural practices and recuperation); notions of West ('repressive tolerance'); in the East (overt repression) the problems of developing Fatherland is a dense, complex Glm which raises big issues: the bureaucratised workers' states; 'true' socialism and his father, is interrupted by grainy black and white nightmarish dream tasks for socialists in The film is structured in three developed around Drittemann's parallel journeys in search of the alienating stay in West Berlin to his search for his exiled father, a Existing Socialism'; the second, in West Berlin, 'Great Freedom Street'; and the final section, set Germany after the suppression journalist accompanies him on classical musician and former accepts a one-way visa to the down the critical lyrics of his sections: the first, set in East West. He travels via a brief, Drittemann, refuses to tone Germany is titled 'Actually Socialism, Capitalism isn't in Britain, 'Stalinism isn't Freedom'. The narrative, has been eagerly awaited. singer/song-writer, Klaus Germany and eventually Britain. A young Dutch In the film, dissident songs in his native East dissident, who left East of the strikes in 1953.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK MAYIJUNE 1987
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