“Stefan Zweig – Farewell to Europe” – He won’t be back [MOVIE REVIEW]
“Stefan Zweig, Farewell to Europe,” is a well-intentioned portrait of the last years of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, one of the world’s most recognized writers of the pre- and post- World War II period. A secular Jew, he recognized the rising dangers in his homeland and exiled himself to England in 1934. Directed by Maria Schrader and written by Schrader and Jan Schomberg, Schrader attempts to portray Zweig’s angst and increasing depression over his exile status and his dismay at what he views as the impending implosion of Europe. Certainly the years this film covers, from 1936 until his death in 1942, justify his depression.
The director’s unmoored script does not provide the cohesiveness necessary to build tension, create character and enhance story. Schrader’s intention of showing Zweig landing in city after city (Rio, Buenos Aires, New York, Petropolis) looking for a new home is meant to highlight his disconnect from the life he once led but instead her presentation underscores the viewers’ inability to lock into Zweig and his struggle.
Schrader’s Zweig is a rather unsympathetic ascetic. Hounded out of Austria, his books banned by the Nazis, Zweig refuses to condemn the political systems perpetrating the horrors that are emerging in Europe. Whether this is an accurate portrayal or not, the film gives the viewer very little to cling to in terms of character. Later in the film, when he lands in New York at the apartment of his ex-wife, a relationship that Schrader deigns not to explain or delineate in any way, he is chastised by her because he is not using his fame and reputation to do more to rescue old friends and colleagues trapped in Europe. Zweig, tortured by the reality of the situation and sympathetic to the dilemma of his friends is more concerned with finding a home where he can rebuild his life. It is to Brazil, a country he idealizes as the future because of the seemingly natural way the Brazilians have blended the different races, that he eventually lands in an idyllic spot called Petropolis. The native population and the other German speaking exiles embrace him and for a time, a very short time, he feels at home.
Schrader’s idea was to present each journey as a separate chapter in Zweig’s life, bookending it with Brazil, so to speak, starting with a reception in Rio in 1936 where he is lauded and ending with his last residence in Petropolis in 1941. The real question, though, is why we should care about this man who could not bring himself to publicly disavow the horrors that were being inflicted on the innocents. At the PEN conference in Buenos Aires in 1936, he famously said, “I won’t speak against Germany. I would never speak against a country. And I won’t make an exception.”
Perhaps this film played better in Austria; no doubt it did since it was the Austrian entry for the foreign film category at last year’s Oscars. The performances are quite good all by actors who, for the most part, are unknown to American film audiences, with the noted exception of Barbara Sukowa (“12 Monkeys,” “Hannah Arendt”) playing Zweig’s first wife Freiderike. Her scenes opposite Josef Hader (Zweig) are brimming with the passion, warmth and commitment absent everywhere else in the film. Austrian Hader is given little to do other than look depressed and lost; he does it well but it’s not enough. More to the point, the problem is not with the very worthy cast. This film is a classic example of there not being a there there. It’s just too hard to invest in an individual who didn’t seem to invest in others. And therein lies the problem. It’s not so much a question that we don’t care because we have no idea who Zweig was or what, ostensibly, he represented; it’s more that the director/writer has not given us a fully developed character with a reason for us to care.
Opening June 16 at the Laemmle Royale in West Los Angeles.