What a masterpiece in quiet tones, insinuation and blank spaces. And the viewer needs to fill and interpret them. What Maria Schrader did not do is a biopic by numbers, but - by showing sketches of a few days of Austrian-Jewish writer Stefan Zweig's life in exile in Brazil during WWII - what happened without a doubt to many other artists, intellectals and others who had fled the German nazi regime. Josef Hader's acting is brilliant, how he hurries from government reception to PEN congress to press conference - always keeping up appearances but beyond his friendly and modest behaviour and the thankfulness to his hosts lies despair about the state of things in europe, his uprooting and depression. Only on occasion - when he speaks with his ex-wife (absolutely wonderful: Barbara Sukowa) and a befriended journalist (likewise: Matthias Brandt) who - coincindentially - moved into the neighbourhood of his last residence, Petropolis - he finally reveals it: 'How can anyone stand this at all?'. Or, in another scene you can see it in his touched-wistful gaze when an untalented brass band gives a poor performance of 'Auf der schönen blauen Donau" ('On the blue Danube') during an improvised (and very funny) reception in a province town in the jungle. The epilogue, shortly after his and his current wive's suicide, again shows the mastery of Maria Schrader's direction: dry police procedural, shocked neighbours and officials, mourning or praying friends, Matthias Brandt reading the suicide note - a panopticon in the wardrobe mirror that occasionally shows the two dead bodies. You only sit there and you are amazed and deeply moved. What a fantastic film!
Review of Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe
