Fatherland (1994 film)

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Fatherland
Genre	Drama Romance Thriller
Written by	Novel Robert Harris Screenplay Stanley Weiser Ron Hutchinson
Directed by	Christopher Menaul
Starring	Rutger Hauer Miranda Richardson Peter Vaughan Jean Marsh Michael Kitchen
Music by	Gary Chang
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
Production
Producers	Gideon Amir Ilene Kahn Frederick Muller Leo Zisman
Production locations	Prague, Czech Republic
Cinematography	Peter Sova
Editor	Tariq Anwar
Running time	106 minutes
Production company	HBO Pictures
Distributor	HBO
Budget	£4.1 million
Release
Original network	HBO
Picture format	Black and White Colour
Audio format	Dolby Digital
Original release	26 November 1994 (United States) 27 January 1995 (Germany) February 1995 (Sweden)

Fatherland is a 1994 TV film written by Stanley Weiser and Ron Hutchinson and directed by Christopher Menaul as an adaptation of the 1992 novel of the same title by Robert Harris. The film was produced by HBO, starring Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson.

Plot[]

A prologue outlines the story's alternate timeline. The failure of the D-Day invasion causes the United States Armed Forces' withdrawal from the European theater of the Second World War and General Dwight D. Eisenhower's retirement in disgrace. The United States continues its Pacific War against the Empire of Japan, and led by General Douglas MacArthur, it uses atomic bombs for its victory. In Europe, Nazi Germany successfully achieves its invasion of the United Kingdom, which results in King George VI fleeing with his family to Canada and continuing to rule the British Empire. Under Nazi supervision, Edward VIII assumes the throne in the United Kingdom, and Wallis Simpson becomes his queen.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill also goes into exile in Canada and lives there until his death in 1953. Germany corrals the rest of Europe, except for the neutral Switzerland and the Vatican, into the Greater German Reich, which is abbreviated to "Germania". At least on the surface, German society is largely clean and orderly, and the SS is reorganised into an elite peacetime police force.

The state is still embroiled in its perpetual war against the Soviet Union, which is still led by the 85-year-old Joseph Stalin well into the 1960s. The 1960 US presidential election is won by Joseph Kennedy, whose anti-Semitic views have been well-publicized. He gives the Nazi leaders a chance to end the Cold War between both powers and to secure a détente with the United States and its allies in South America. In 1964, as Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday approaches. Kennedy heads to a summit meeting in Germany, whose borders are being opened to media from the United States and Latin America.

A week before the summit, a body is discovered to be floating in a lake near Berlin by Hermann Jost (Rupert Penry-Jones), who is an SS cadet in training. SS Major Xavier March (Rutger Hauer) is assigned the case and questions Jost, who admits that he saw the body being dumped by Odilo "Globus" Globočnik (John Shrapnel), an Obergruppenführer of the Gestapo and a right-hand man of the SS leader, Reinhard Heydrich. The dead man is revealed to be Josef Bühler, a retired Nazi Party official who managed the Jewish resettlement to the German territories in Eastern Europe during the Second World War. The Gestapo takes over the case for reasons of "state security", and Jost dies in an apparent training accident.

Meanwhile, Charlotte "Charlie" Maguire (Miranda Richardson), a member of a visiting American press entourage, is discreetly given an envelope by an old man at her hotel. Inside it is a photograph of several high-ranking Nazi officials outside a villa. A note on the photograph leads her to Wilhelm Stuckart, another retired party official, but she finds him dead at his apartment.

March is reassigned to the Stuckart case, but when he takes Maguire to the crime scene, the Gestapo claims jurisdiction, and his superior, Arthur Nebe (Peter Vaughan), warns him against further investigation. When they follow up on the photo, Maguire and March visit Wannsee to learn the identities of the men. All of them attended the Wannsee Conference and are found to have died under suspicious circumstances except one. The only survivor is Franz Luther (John Woodvine), the old man who gave Maguire the picture.

March tells her to get out of Germany since he now realises that there is a plot by the regime's highest levels to cover up whatever was discussed at the conference. Luther contacts Maguire and asks her to meet him on a train, where he requests her to communicate his desire for safe passage to the United States in exchange for what he knows about "the biggest secret of the war". SS troops corner Luther and kill him, but March rescues Maguire. He later blackmails a colleague to get Luther's file and learns that he had a mistress, the former stage actress Anna von Hagen.

Maguire, posing as an official of the American embassy in Berlin to process Luther's safe passage, visits Hagen and obtains Luther's papers. Hagen reveals that the Jews were not really resettled but that they were killed en masse by the Germans during the war, as had been planned at the conference.

March is horrified by the pictures and the documents, which prove that the events actually happened, and he agrees to join Maguire and to escape Germany with his son, Pili. However, the Gestapo has already persuaded Pili to betray March, who is lured into a trap by Globus. During his escape, March kills a Gestapo agent but is mortally wounded. He manages to reach a phone booth to call Pili for a final time and then dies.

As Kennedy arrives at Berlin's Great Hall, a member of the press entourage helps Maguire when she slips the documents to him through the US ambassador. When Kennedy looks at the materials, he abruptly cancels the scheduled meeting with Hitler and immediately flies back to the US.

The epilogue reveals that the narrator is a grown-up Pili, who notes that although Maguire was eventually arrested by the Gestapo, the revelation of the extermination of European Jews derailed any prospect of a strategic alliance with the United States. Eventually, revolutions occurred across Europe and resulted in the Nazi regime's collapse.

Cast[]

• Rutger Hauer as Sturmbannführer Xavier March
• Miranda Richardson as Charlie Maguire
• Peter Vaughan as SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe
• Jean Marsh as Anna von Hagen
• Michael Kitchen as Untersturmführer Max Jäger
• John Woodvine as Franz Luther
• John Shrapnel as Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik, aka "Globus"
• Rupert Penry-Jones as Hermann Jost
• Clive Russell as Karl Krebs
• Clare Higgins as Klara
• Neil Dudgeon as Hauptsturmführer Walther Fiebes
• Patronella Barker as Helga Schröder

Production[]

Mike Nichols bought the film rights before the novel was published in the United States.^[1] When a theatrical film proved unfeasible, the production moved to HBO. The film was budgeted at $7 million and was filmed entirely in Prague.^[2]

The newly opened Praha Penta Hotel, which is now Hilton Prague Old Town, doubled for Berlin's Hotel Adlon in which Maguire stays. The headquarters of Radio Free Europe, now the New Building of the National Museum, served as the Berlin Police headquarters, where March works. The National Monument in Vitkov was used as the Sepp Dietrich SS Academy. The rear façade of the headquarters of Motokov, the Czech state car company, now the City Empiria tower, served as the exterior of the Reichsarchiv. The Nazi rally in the finale was filmed at Letná Park, including at the former Stalin Monument.

Reception[]

The film received mixed reviews. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes rated it at 50% from six reviews.^[3]

Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly graded the film at B+. He states that the book's plot was faithfully reproduced and helped pull good performances from Hauer and Richardson. He also noted Menaul's directing by adding small details such as advertisements on the Beatles' shows. However, he states that the revelation's predictability detracted from the film.^[4]

Since the adaptation's release, Harris announced he was disappointed with it. Speaking to The Independent in 2012, he said:

"My first novel, Fatherland, was made into a very bad film. [It] was originally bought by Mike Nichols to be made into a feature film. But in the end he couldn't get a studio to back it so the project became a made-for-television movie for HBO instead. By the time it was shot there'd been so many artistic compromises – in particular two fundamental changes in the story – that it ceased to have the feel of the novel. Some people like it but I have to say that I don't."^[5]

Awards[]

Richardson received a Golden Globe Award in 1995 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV for her performance. Hauer's performance was also nominated, as well as the film itself. The film also received an Emmy nomination in 1995 for Special Visual Effects.

Gallery[]

• Fatherland filming locations in Prague
• 

  The New building of the National Museum, used as Berlin Police HQ

• 

  Hilton Prague Old Town, used as the Hotel Adlon

• 

  National Monument in Vitkov, used as the Sepp Dietrich SS Academy

• 

  The Motokov tower, used as the Reichsarchiv

• 

  The former Stalin Monument in Letná Park, used for the Nazi rally in the finale

References[]

External links[]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Fatherland (film)

• Fatherland at IMDb