Stefan
Zweig was one of the many Jewish intellectuals who escaped National
Socialist-dominated Europe through Varian Fry’s network, yet he tragically took
his own life in 1942, out of despair with the state of the world and his
Austrian homeland. Such depression was not uncommon among European emigres. The
guilt and alienation of the involuntary expatriate experience are fully
explored in Maria Schrader’s Stefan
Zweig: Farewell to Europe (trailer here), Austria’s official foreign language Oscar
submission, which screens during the AFI’s 2016 EU Film Showcase.
After
Thomas Mann, Zweig was the second most widely read German language novelist in
Europe and the Americas during the 1930s. Thanks to The Grand Budapest Hotel, he has made a recent posthumous comeback.
Farewell to Europe should further
fuel the Zweig renaissance, even though does not always portray him in the most
flattering light. Frankly, many viewers will be frustrated by Zweig’s reluctance
to condemn the country he could no longer call home. However, they should also
respect his principled refusal to grandstand or to criticize as someone now safely
standing on the outside looking in.
Basically,
Schrader evokes a sense of Zweig’s life in exile through five extended
vignettes. In terms of tone and structure, Farewell
to Europe often resembles a
theater piece, but the thesp-turned-helmer shows a strong aptitude for visual
composition, which helps viewer engagement. Much like its subject, it is a
cerebral film that refuses to engage in cheap sentiment or phony moral uplift.
Although
scrupulously buttoned-down and reserved, Josef Hader is just terrific as Zweig.
When he quietly lowers the boom, it is guaranteed to flatten the audience.
Likewise, Aenne Schwarz is wonderfully smart and sad as his younger but constitutionally
weaker second wife Lotte. German grand dame Barbara Sukowa (who played the
title role in Von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt,
a fitting comparative film) gives the film some real bite as Zweig’s first wife
Friderike, with whom he maintains complicated but mostly amicable relations.
The way she first rebukes him and then absolves him during a New York reunion
is quite compelling, but also rings consistently true.
