Fantaspoa ’24: Mastergame

“B” is the sort of film character Garry Kasparov would probably approve of, and possibly relate to, as both a chess master and a human rights activist. Arrested during the Soviet crackdown on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the Catholic priest is being held in conditions of extreme mental and physical isolation. His only distraction is a slim book about chess. If that sounds familiar, it is because this film is also based on Stefan Zweig’s novella, “The Royal Game,” just like Philipp Stolzl’s recent Chess Story. However, Barnabas Toth takes Zweig’s themes in a very David Lynchian direction, while revisiting Hungary’s traumatic Communist history in Mastergame, which screens during this year’s Fantaspoa in Porto Alegre.

Istvan and Marta are two young anti-Communist lovers desperately trying to leave Hungary, before the Soviets seal the borders. Normally, you want to be on the “last train out,” no matter the cost, but there is something ominous about this train, beyond its Casablanca like collection of former revolutionaries, Communist spies, and petty criminals. A mild-mannered priest is also aboard (who maybe not so coincidentally bears some resemblance to Cardinal Mindszenty).

The priest is only referred to as “B” during the interrogations that make up Mastergame’s other timeline. According to his file, B withstood extraordinary physical torture while he was a prisoner of the Nazis, so they opt for different methods. They forbid the deeply humanistic cleric any human contact, even hiding the faces of his captors. His interrogator wants to break his spirit by severing his connection to humanity. However, the chance discovery of the chess book gives him something to occupy his mind.

If you know Chess Story or “The Royal Game,” you have a good idea of what is really going on, but the addition of the Marta-Istvan subplot adds an intriguing new dimension. In terms of tone, Mastergame feels very much like vintage Lynch ostensibly working in the mystery genre, as in Mulholland Drive. In fact, the skullduggery on the train is so well executed, Mastergame will be keenly suspenseful, even for the world’s greatest authority on Zweig. On top of that, setting the story amid the Hungarian Revolution adds a greater sense of grand historical tragedy.

AFI’s EU Showcase ’16: Stefan Zweig—Farewell to Europe

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.

Schrader proves to be an actor’s director, which maybe is not so surprising. Farewell to Europe also represents quite an accomplishment of mise en scène, but pacing remains an area where she could better refine her craft. Still, it is refreshing to watch an intelligent film that trusts the audience to pick up on its points without shining a searing spotlight on them. Recommended for admirers of Zweig and German-language cinema, the potential Oscar contender Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe screens this Sunday (12/11) and Wednesday (12/14), as part of the AFI’s annual EU Film Showcase.

BRAFF NY ’14: The Invisible Collection

It was hyperinflation that laid once noble Saxon families low in Stefan Zweig’s short story. In Bernard Attal’s Brazilian adaptation, it is a fungal pestilence known as the “Witches Broom” that has ravaged plantations in Bahia. Yet collectors still collect, obsessively. A young art dealer will seek the rare prints his father sold to an eccentric customer, but the old man’s family will have none of him in Attal’s The Invisible Collection (trailer here), which screens during the 2014 Brazilian Film Festival in New York.

In a departure from Zweig, Beto is a former DJ, whose high flying party world came crashing down when an SUV full of his closest friends died in a traffic accident. As a strange attempt to rouse her deflated son, Dona Iolanda suddenly reveals the precarious state of their finances. Yet, it sort of works, especially when an old colleague drops by with word an American curator will pay top dollar for a formerly obscure artist’s work. It turns out his father sold several such pieces to Samir Loedy, an eccentric cocoa plantation owner in Itajuípe.

Having faith in his charm, Beto sets out to reacquire the prints and flip them to the American, but Loedy’s wife Dona Clara and daughter Saada are not taken in. A game of wits ensues, as Beto struggles to make contact with Don Samir, scrambling to evade the strong, forceful women of the plantation.

Considering the original source material is a brief O. Henryesque tale, Attal’s feature treatment (co-written with Sérgio Machado and Iziane Mascarenhas) nicely expands and Brazilianizes the story in ways that feel natural and logical. Even though it sounds like a cliché on paper, the halting attraction between the urban hipster and the earthy, gun-toting Saada is particularly well turned by Vladimir Brichta and Ludmila Rosa, respectively.

Frankly, Brichta is a bit of a bland playboy in his scenes without Rosa, but he is evidently quite the thing with teenage Brazilian girls, so here he is. As Dona Clara, Clarisse Abujamra brings real grace and dignity to the film, while Walmor Chagas deftly avoids overplaying the blind and somewhat muddled Loedy. Still, we really did not need the plucky shanty kid who appoints himself Beto’s personal tour guide (that is one overused convention Attal and company are not able to appreciably freshen up).

Attal, the French transplant, has documented the very real Witches Broom outbreak in a previous film, so he is highly attuned to its devastating effects. As a result, he strikingly captures the beauty and the blight of the Bahia region. Still, the vibe is not radically different from that of Zweig (who took his own life while living as a political émigré in Brazil).

Attal’s take also comes amid the blossoming of a mini-cinematic renaissance for Zweig’s work. In addition to Patrice Leconte’s faithful but bloodless adaptation of A Promise, Zweig’s oeuvre was an inspiration for the Grand Budapest Hotel. More than a footnote to this trend, Attal’s Collection is a rather thoughtful blend of old and new world sensibilities. Recommended for literate audiences, The Invisible Collection screens this coming Tuesday (6/2) and next Friday (6/6) as part of this year’s Brazilian Film Festival in New York.

A Promise: Leconte Adapts Zweig

Few understood the pain of involuntary exile as acutely as Stefan Zweig. In his day, the Jewish Austrian was the world’s most translated author, but he took his own life while living as a political émigré in Brazil. In his posthumous novella, Journey into the Past, Zweig’s protagonist is also stranded in Latin America, separated from his love and homeland. For his first English language film, French director Patrice Leconte adapted Zweig’s wistful German tale with a British cast. Whether you consider it reserved or repressed, it is most definitely “Old” Europe that dictates social expectations for the characters of Leconte’s A Promise (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

Friedrich Zeitz has done the near impossible. Like a German Horatio Alger hero, the poor orphan worked his way through university as a scholarship student, eventually finding employment in the offices of the steelworks owned and operated by the dreaded Herr Karl Hoffmeister. At least, Zeitz is told to fear his aristocratic boss. However, when Herr Hoffmeister notices the young man’s keen grasp of metallurgy and relentless work ethic, he takes a shine to his new clerk.

With his health slowly declining, the increasingly home-bound Herr Hoffmeister promotes Zeitz to serve as his private secretary and liaison to the corporate office. Of course, that home is more of a castle. As soon as he is admitted into the Hoffmeister estate, Zeitz promptly falls head over heels for his boss’s younger wife, Charlotte (who goes by Lotte, echoing Zweig’s wife and secretary, Lotte Altmann).

Lotte Hoffmeister is unfailingly gracious and welcoming to Zeitz, but she initially seems oblivious to his attraction, despite the way his eyes bug out of his head like a cartoon character whenever she is around. Still, maybe someone notices his torch-carrying. Just as Zeitz is transferred to Hoffmeister’s embryonic mining operation in Mexico, Lotte Hoffmeister confesses Zeitz’s ardor is reciprocated. They vow (or promise, if you will) to do something about it, once he returns from his two year stint abroad. Then World War I breaks out.

One of the ironies Leconte and co-adaptor Jérôme Tonnere clearly make without excessively belaboring is the extent highly intelligent people can lose sight of the critically important macro events swirling around them because they are caught up in their own personal dramas. Despite working in the steel industry, Zeitz and Herr Hoffmeister are caught completely flat-footed by the onset of the first World War (you think they might have noticed a slight uptick in government orders). Likewise, the climatic reunion commences just as the growing ranks of National Socialists launch another street protest-riot.

The passionate feelings of Zeitz and Frau Hoffmeister are so chaste and restrained A Promise is likely to frustrate most viewers more accustomed to instant gratification. Yet, the yearn and burn of their thwarted love is quite powerful for those who can appreciate it. Unfortunately, Rebecca Hall and Richard (Game of Thrones) Madden must make the most vanilla couple you will ever see as Zeitz and Frau Hoffmeister. In contrast, Alan Rickman outshines everyone as the sly but not villainous Herr Hoffmeister, showing the sort of erudite charisma he brought to bear in overlooked films like Bottle Shock and Song of Lunch.

Handsomely mounted, A Promise’s period details are elegant but convincingly Teutonic in their chilly austerity, while superstar cinematographer Eduardo Serra gives it all a sensitive sheen superior to the look of your average BBC historical. A mature and emotionally sophisticated literary drama largely waterlogged by its two cold fish romantic leads, A Promise is flawed but still oddly enticing for those who share its Old European sensibilities. It opens this Friday (4/18) at the IFC Center.