Fatherland (1994)

I didn't have many options for today because I'm a bit "out of service" due to some eye problem (which I hope it will solve by itself next week ...). Getting to the point, not very long ago I was writing about "Enigma". "Fatherland" is an adaptation based on the same author, Robert Harris, pretty much keeping the same feeling of a mix between drama and thriller based on 2nd WW history facts (well, not directly WW2 related this time and in a fictive setting, but nevertheless the movie has pretty much the same "air").

As setting we have an alternate history, in which the Nazi Germani won WW2 becoming an empire, and in the 60's Hitler is celebrating his 75 birthday while on the eastern front there still are ongoing guerrilla battles and on the west side the US president is expected to arrive in Berlin for a historical peace treaty meant to end up any frictions between the two powers. The movie starts with an SS officer (SS becoming a police force after the war) who is called to investigate a body of one of the former major Nazi party leaders found in a lake a few days prior to the US-German meeting. Simultaneously, a female journalist just arrived from the US for the coming event is approached by a mysterious old guy who gives her an envelope with a group photo, a name and an address that might have something important to tell. This is pretty much the beginning of the movie plot, that might seem sufficiently interesting at a first sight but it has a major problem. The action development becomes quite obvious quite fast, the two mentioned before getting entangled together in a sort of investigation that finally reveals something well hidden by the Nazi regime in the history context of the movie - the Holocaust. No spoilers here, because it's almost 100% obvious from the beginning which states the official version of the alternate history context about relocating the Jews into the east .. but considering that in the same alternate history context we don't have anything to give a reason for this difference from the real one it's quite clear that the statement is a fake.

I didn't say everything about the action of the movie, but it's probably not very difficult to see in what direction it goes. Thing that's the main problem of the movie. You pretty much can figure at every moment how all this is going to end, well ... maybe without the fate of the main characters, but give the context this is secondary to the main plot. Considering the rest, for a TV movie (it is for TV - made by HBO) I think it's quite good as production value, beginning with the cast - Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson (awarded with a Golden Globe) up to the production design, quite detailed, giving a feeling probably quite close to how you would imagine a 60's Nazi Berlin. Instead of the trailer (which I don't know if it even exists) I'll end with a clip from the first part of the movie that gives a pretty good example about this. And I think that actually the production design is probably the main reason to watch the movie. Personally, I'm waiting for an adaptation of P.K.Dick's "Man in the High Castle" or Len Deighton's "SS-GB", those following a pretty similar alternate history, and even if I didn't read any of them yet, from what I've heard they have a bit more potential in the story.

Rating: 3 out of 5