[REVIEW] The Director by Daniel Kehlmann; translated by Ross Benjamin

 

He had been absent minded when attended the premiere in Vienna, bowing with Deutsch, Heuser, and Hübler while Trude sat clapping in the first row, and when he accepted his prize at the Venice Film Festival, where he had recently been honored under swastika and faces flags for The Comedians.

"But it makes no difference" he had told Trude on the way home. 

"An award like that changes nothing. The only thing that matters is whether you've made a film that endures"

Would you make a deal with the devil? 

Would you resist him even if it meant death?

These are some of the questions that Daniel Kehlmann poses, when re-elaborating the life of Georg Wilhelm Pabst, director and actor born in Austria in the late 1800s.  

G.W. Pabst is the perfect subject for this experiment. Very little is known of his private life, beyond his work and constant moving across the globe. A point, that baffles many to this day, is why, a director of his fame and political stance ( he was often referred to as "Red Pabst") chose to make a return to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, condemning himself to the undesired attention of the Ministry of Propaganda. 

This is where the author intervenes, presenting to us his imagined version of reality. He attempts to justify the sudden move, the collaboration with the Nazist Regime, to understand Pabst complex and obscure character. He mixes history with fiction: Georg never had an affair with Louise Brooks, nor a teenage son name Jakob. He probably never met Leni Riefenstahl, nor helped her in filming a movie, nor he had private audiences with Goebbels.

However, this grotesque, unabridged biography poses a fundamental dilemma relevant to this day: risking censorship, bravely and heroically stand against injustice, or taking the devils' hand, complying to his requests and hoping for a brighter future to come?

No one, without hindsight, can tell you what is right as you make the choice. And you must be able to live with the consequences of your actions. And yet, it is so fundamentally human to regret, at every step, what could have been, and long for what might soon be.

It is a treat of history geeks and movie nerds. Sadly I am neither, but the writing was enticing and the story was entertaining, ⭐⭐⭐/5

"I have hurt you so much" he said. "I loved another woman, and I brought you and Jakob back into hell"

"One can be forgiven, but the other... Do you remember? The letter he wrote at night when he was sixteen and he couldn't sleep from excitement because the whole class would be joining the Party the next day? That can't be forgiven"

"Never?"

"It doesn't matter. I stopped loving you long ago."