Telluried Journal 2026
#53
“Art is the most advanced operating system for explaining human consciousness.”
Roberta Smith in House of Criticism.
Rose, by Director Marcus Schlieizer, was the first film I saw this year at TFF. Sandra Hüller plays Rose, who does not divulge her name until late in the film because she tries to live her life as a man in a small village in Germany in the 17th century. Like Arnaud in the Return of Martin Guerre, she assumes the identity of another man, here a fallen comrade. Having taken possession of the farm with his papers and then finding acceptance in the village by shooting a bear that was threatening the sheep, she revives the neglected farm. However, her success brings her the offer of a wife. One of the outstanding moments in the film occurs after her young wife discovers she is a woman: they discuss Rose’s leaving the farm she has built up and Rose tells Susanna that if she leaves, Suzanna will just be subject to a husband who will be her master.
The word “master” is used again and again, as is the idea that in living as a man, Rose has freedoms she would not otherwise have had in the 17th century. Susanna accepts Rose’s offer—she has her own reasons, as she is pregnant–and the two women form a sort of partnership and in that they find freedom for a while. Then the village turns against Rose and Susanna, and they are ultimately tried and severely punished for their subversion of social norms. Hüller stares into the lens of the camera, her face distorted by a scar, roughened by war and farming. She is full of power and strength, although she is carrying the burden of a huge secret. After she is caught, Rose tells her prosecutors: “I did what I could,” in another stark full frontal close–up that sears her countenance into our minds.
I think this may be the most or one of the most powerful films I have ever seen regarding what we used to call (when we were woke) the social construction of gender. Hüller said the film made her think about “ what it means to perform a gender, which makes the film very modern and a film for today.” “I wasn’t aware,” she went on, “of how difficult it was to perform a male life—maybe even for a man.” The village leaders literally determine who can act like a man or a woman and their power is carried out with appalling violence. It might be worth mentioning that the village adhered to a strong patriarchal protestant sect.
The sound design was subtle, mysterious and melancholy with a voice-over lending a sense of intimacy with a reflective tone. These elements combined with black and white photography to create a haunting sense of place and time. The film “was like a long poem” Hüller told France 24 interviewer Eve Jackson.
I mentioned that Schlieizer’s film brought to mind another film regarding outsiders in an agricultural community, The Return of Martin Guerre (1982). It stars a young Gérard Depardieu and takes place in France in the 16th century. When an imposter returns from the Hundred Years’ War, with knowledge of the village and farm, his wife may or may not know that he is not Martin Guerre. In other words, she makes a choice. Like Rose, Arnaud is unmasked and tried, but our sympathy lies with him completely, rather than the actual Martin Guerre who does eventually show up. Although the man whose identity and land Rose adopted was killed, and the key difference has to do with gender (a woman wearing pants), there are deep resonances between the films.
Martin Guerre the film was based on a true, albeit folkloric story; it was not written by historian Natalie Zemon Davis, but she did write a book of that name. She also wrote a key essay entitled “Women on Top” exploring the active social and economic roles of women in the 16th century when they had much more agency than one might think. Martin Guerre’s wife made the choice of the kind hearted and industrious outsider/imposter. Rose, another imposter/outsider, was determined, capable and hardy; she turned an abandoned farm into a prosperous enterprise. Is it too woke to ask if there is not great goodness within the outsider?
In another notable performance, Sandra Hüller plays the role of the dutiful daughter who escorts her father, famed German writer Thomas Mann back to Germany in 1949, after years of exile in California due to his protests against Hitler. Annette Insdorf referred to Pawel Pawlikowsky’s film, Fatherland, as the third in a trilogy of films regarding postwar WWII Europe: Ida (2013), Cold War (2018) and now Fatherland traverse the ruins, the complex destabilized aftermath of WWII both in Poland and here, Germany. Pawlikowsky studied German literature at Oxford, so the subject matter and wealth of allusions to people such as writers Walter Benjamin and Stefan Zweig (who, like Mann’s son, committed suicide, although there seems to be some disagreement regarding Klaus Mann) underlies the film.
It’s hard to say whether it was the director’s study of literature or something more that enabled him to make a film that feels like chamber music–possibly Beethoven’s somber string quartets–but it does. Each element of film—sound, script, camera, editing – work together with precision and grace: this formalism and restraint produce the emotional tenor of the film. The diegetic music in Fatherland moves from classical to post-war East German popular songs and ends with father and daughter listening to a man in an abandoned building play a piece on an organ by Bach.
I found myself noting the compositions and rhythm of the shots: close-ups alternated with shots where the action took place in the middle of a crowd, a variety of diagonals alternated with symmetrical compositions. Pawlikowsky’s cinematographer, Lukasz Zal worked with Jonathon Glazer on Zone of Interest (2023) as well as on Pawlikowski’s other films.
Erika Mann attends to her father’s every need, acts as public relations assistant, all the while she is grieving for the death of her brother Klaus Mann, also a writer who was critical of the fascists, but not very welcome in the U.S because he was a gay communist.
The Noble Prize-winning Thomas Mann, forced into exile in 1933 (first to Switzerland, then to L.A. in 1939), makes a return visit to a Germany still in ruins in post-War 1949. Erika ushers her father through cocktail parties, public addresses and meetings. The restraint shown by Hüller’s character and the thoughtful but terse Mann himself shows their feelings for the attempt by officials of the GDR (German Democratic Republic or Communist East Germany) to lure him back and lend them legitimacy.
There are many superb quotations in the film. One of my favorites is Oscar Wilde’s quote about Utopia: “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.” I took the director’s inclusion of this thought as an expression of the filmmaker’s ambivalence regarding the GDR, which is generally regarded as a failure and certainly lost its way, but began with idealistic hope for socialism.
Early on in the return visit, when he is still in West Germany, he is asked about his political preference, which is reduced to Stalin versus Mickey Mouse. The comment is straight out of Adorno, the philosopher of the Frankfurt School, who felt that there was no chance of becoming free when we are programmed by both the workplace and the entertainment industry to consume. (The Frankfurt School was a group of scholars and intellectuals known for the study of power relations in society, the foundation of critical theory.)
Casting all this aside, the Mann family was set adrift by the war, like so many other artists, filmmakers and writers, so the meaning of exile and home and in the German sense Heimat, (roughly where one truly belongs in terms of identity) is a central theme of the film. And Fatherland’s portrayal of a loving, resigned, protective relationship between a daughter and a problematic father is the heart of the film. Mann tells his daughter, “I don’t believe in anything anymore…it was always you and me against the world.”
https://www.wilde-online.info/the-soul-of-man-under-socialism-page11.html
For anyone not familiar with Thomas Mann who might not want to slog through his long novels, Buddenbrooks or The Magic Mountain (although I have friend who rereads it every so often) they might have a look at the film based on a Mann novella, Death in Venice (1971) directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Dirk Bogard. This actor, popular in the ‘70s made a celluloid (well, digital) appearance at Telluride in Joseph Losey’s (script by Harold Pinter) The Servant (1973) chosen by guest director, actress, Rebecca Hall. I wasn’t able to attend but I have seen it and recommend it very highly.
#53
“Art is the most advanced operating system for explaining human consciousness.”
Roberta Smith in House of Criticism.
Rose, by Director Marcus Schlieizer, was the first film I saw this year at TFF. Sandra Hüller plays Rose, who does not divulge her name until late in the film because she tries to live her life as a man in a small village in Germany in the 17th century. Like Arnaud in the Return of Martin Guerre, she assumes the identity of another man, here a fallen comrade. Having taken possession of the farm with his papers and then finding acceptance in the village by shooting a bear that was threatening the sheep, she revives the neglected farm. However, her success brings her the offer of a wife. One of the outstanding moments in the film occurs after her young wife discovers she is a woman: they discuss Rose’s leaving the farm she has built up and Rose tells Susanna that if she leaves, Suzanna will just be subject to a husband who will be her master.
The word “master” is used again and again, as is the idea that in living as a man, Rose has freedoms she would not otherwise have had in the 17th century. Susanna accepts Rose’s offer—she has her own reasons, as she is pregnant–and the two women form a sort of partnership and in that they find freedom for a while. Then the village turns against Rose and Susanna, and they are ultimately tried and severely punished for their subversion of social norms. Hüller stares into the lens of the camera, her face distorted by a scar, roughened by war and farming. She is full of power and strength, although she is carrying the burden of a huge secret. After she is caught, Rose tells her prosecutors: “I did what I could,” in another stark full frontal close–up that sears her countenance into our minds.
I think this may be the most or one of the most powerful films I have ever seen regarding what we used to call (when we were woke) the social construction of gender. Hüller said the film made her think about “ what it means to perform a gender, which makes the film very modern and a film for today.” “I wasn’t aware,” she went on, “of how difficult it was to perform a male life—maybe even for a man.” The village leaders literally determine who can act like a man or a woman and their power is carried out with appalling violence. It might be worth mentioning that the village adhered to a strong patriarchal protestant sect.
The sound design was subtle, mysterious and melancholy with a voice-over lending a sense of intimacy with a reflective tone. These elements combined with black and white photography to create a haunting sense of place and time. The film “was like a long poem” Hüller told France 24 interviewer Eve Jackson.
I mentioned that Schlieizer’s film brought to mind another film regarding outsiders in an agricultural community, The Return of Martin Guerre (1982). It stars a young Gérard Depardieu and takes place in France in the 16th century. When an imposter returns from the Hundred Years’ War, with knowledge of the village and farm, his wife may or may not know that he is not Martin Guerre. In other words, she makes a choice. Like Rose, Arnaud is unmasked and tried, but our sympathy lies with him completely, rather than the actual Martin Guerre who does eventually show up. Although the man whose identity and land Rose adopted was killed, and the key difference has to do with gender (a woman wearing pants), there are deep resonances between the films.
Martin Guerre the film was based on a true, albeit folkloric story; it was not written by historian Natalie Zemon Davis, but she did write a book of that name. She also wrote a key essay entitled “Women on Top” exploring the active social and economic roles of women in the 16th century when they had much more agency than one might think. Martin Guerre’s wife made the choice of the kind hearted and industrious outsider/imposter. Rose, another imposter/outsider, was determined, capable and hardy; she turned an abandoned farm into a prosperous enterprise. Is it too woke to ask if there is not great goodness within the outsider?
In another notable performance, Sandra Hüller plays the role of the dutiful daughter who escorts her father, famed German writer Thomas Mann back to Germany in 1949, after years of exile in California due to his protests against Hitler. Annette Insdorf referred to Pawel Pawlikowsky’s film, Fatherland, as the third in a trilogy of films regarding postwar WWII Europe: Ida (2013), Cold War (2018) and now Fatherland traverse the ruins, the complex destabilized aftermath of WWII both in Poland and here, Germany. Pawlikowsky studied German literature at Oxford, so the subject matter and wealth of allusions to people such as writers Walter Benjamin and Stefan Zweig (who, like Mann’s son, committed suicide, although there seems to be some disagreement regarding Klaus Mann) underlies the film.
It’s hard to say whether it was the director’s study of literature or something more that enabled him to make a film that feels like chamber music–possibly Beethoven’s somber string quartets–but it does. Each element of film—sound, script, camera, editing – work together with precision and grace: this formalism and restraint produce the emotional tenor of the film. The diegetic music in Fatherland moves from classical to post-war East German popular songs and ends with father and daughter listening to a man in an abandoned building play a piece on an organ by Bach.
I found myself noting the compositions and rhythm of the shots: close-ups alternated with shots where the action took place in the middle of a crowd, a variety of diagonals alternated with symmetrical compositions. Pawlikowsky’s cinematographer, Lukasz Zal worked with Jonathon Glazer on Zone of Interest (2023) as well as on Pawlikowski’s other films.
Erika Mann attends to her father’s every need, acts as public relations assistant, all the while she is grieving for the death of her brother Klaus Mann, also a writer who was critical of the fascists, but not very welcome in the U.S because he was a gay communist.
The Noble Prize-winning Thomas Mann, forced into exile in 1933 (first to Switzerland, then to L.A. in 1939), makes a return visit to a Germany still in ruins in post-War 1949. Erika ushers her father through cocktail parties, public addresses and meetings. The restraint shown by Hüller’s character and the thoughtful but terse Mann himself shows their feelings for the attempt by officials of the GDR (German Democratic Republic or Communist East Germany) to lure him back and lend them legitimacy.
There are many superb quotations in the film. One of my favorites is Oscar Wilde’s quote about Utopia: “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.” I took the director’s inclusion of this thought as an expression of the filmmaker’s ambivalence regarding the GDR, which is generally regarded as a failure and certainly lost its way, but began with idealistic hope for socialism.
Early on in the return visit, when he is still in West Germany, he is asked about his political preference, which is reduced to Stalin versus Mickey Mouse. The comment is straight out of Adorno, the philosopher of the Frankfurt School, who felt that there was no chance of becoming free when we are programmed by both the workplace and the entertainment industry to consume. (The Frankfurt School was a group of scholars and intellectuals known for the study of power relations in society, the foundation of critical theory.)
Casting all this aside, the Mann family was set adrift by the war, like so many other artists, filmmakers and writers, so the meaning of exile and home and in the German sense Heimat, (roughly where one truly belongs in terms of identity) is a central theme of the film. And Fatherland’s portrayal of a loving, resigned, protective relationship between a daughter and a problematic father is the heart of the film. Mann tells his daughter, “I don’t believe in anything anymore…it was always you and me against the world.”
https://www.wilde-online.info/the-soul-of-man-under-socialism-page11.html
For anyone not familiar with Thomas Mann who might not want to slog through his long novels, Buddenbrooks or The Magic Mountain (although I have friend who rereads it every so often) they might have a look at the film based on a Mann novella, Death in Venice (1971) directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Dirk Bogard. This actor, popular in the ‘70s made a celluloid (well, digital) appearance at Telluride in Joseph Losey’s (script by Harold Pinter) The Servant (1973) chosen by guest director, actress, Rebecca Hall. I wasn’t able to attend but I have seen it and recommend it very highly.
