He was a 'good German'." Pawel Pawlikowski - about the film "Motherland", Thomas Mann and historical accuracy Hello, this is Anton, long time no see! I will mostly be with you this week. It's Sofia's turn to go on vacation, so in the meantime there will be fewer posts than usual. We will start with an interview with Pawel Pawlikowski, the director who directed, in my opinion, the best film of the year, "Waterland" ("Land of the Fathers"). At all, I had no chance not to like it, because it's a movie about Thomas Mann, my favorite writer, plus Sandra Holler, my favorite actress, is in it. But even if you take all that out of the equation, the film is outstanding. Accurate, concise and on time. Let me remind you that this is the journey of Mann, the intellectual leader of the anti-fascist Germans, through the divided post-war Germany. Together with his daughter Erika - an actress, writer and journalist who, in fact, worked as her father's assistant - Mann visits first the Federal Republic of Germany and then the German Democratic Republic: the authorities of both countries invited him to give a speech at the celebrations dedicated to the anniversary of Goethe. Of course, in both cases they try to use the author's authority sarcastically. By the way, only from this interview conducted by Anton Dolin, I learned that such a trip actually did not happen. Or rather, but this time Mann traveled without Erica. The two arrived in Germany for another wedding anniversary - that of Friedrich Schiller. And the events related to the writer's son, Klaus, the author of the novel "Mephisto", happened a little earlier. This is what Pawlikowski says about the parallels between post-war Europe and today. The situation seems too familiar to ignore. The system has collapsed, and the vacated space is being taken over by aggressive narratives - each of them doing everything to lure you into their orbit. Analogies are never accurate! In those days there were no "digital bubbles" with their simplest agenda, but there were others, quite similar.

He was a 'good German'." Pawel Pawlikowski - about the film "Motherland", Thomas Mann and historical accuracy Hello, this is Anton, long time no see! I will mostly be with you this week. It's Sofia's turn to go on vacation, so in the meantime there will be fewer posts than usual. We will start with an interview with Pawel Pawlikowski, the director who directed, in my opinion, the best film of the year, "Waterland" ("Land of the Fathers"). At all, I had no chance not to like it, because it's a movie about Thomas Mann, my favorite writer, plus Sandra Holler, my favorite actress, is in it. But even if you take all that out of the equation, the film is outstanding. Accurate, concise and on time. Let me remind you that this is the journey of Mann, the intellectual leader of the anti-fascist Germans, through the divided post-war Germany. Together with his daughter Erika - an actress, writer and journalist who, in fact, worked as her father's assistant - Mann visits first the Federal Republic of Germany and then the German Democratic Republic: the authorities of both countries invited him to give a speech at the celebrations dedicated to the anniversary of Goethe. Of course, in both cases they try to use the author's authority sarcastically. By the way, only from this interview conducted by Anton Dolin, I learned that such a trip actually did not happen. Or rather, but this time Mann traveled without Erica. The two arrived in Germany for another wedding anniversary - that of Friedrich Schiller. And the events related to the writer's son, Klaus, the author of the novel "Mephisto", happened a little earlier. This is what Pawlikowski says about the parallels between post-war Europe and today. The situation seems too familiar to ignore. The system has collapsed, and the vacated space is being taken over by aggressive narratives - each of them doing everything to lure you into their orbit. Analogies are never accurate! In those days there were no "digital bubbles" with their simplest agenda, but there were others, quite similar.