Fatherland (1994)

Touches You

Simply A Masterpiece

Fantastic!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Rutger Hauers Police station is built of glass and concrete, an architectural style Hitler hated. "Das Beatles' poster on the wall obviously to try to allude to a certain decade, the 1960's but again, this sort of music would have been deemed degenerate...and the four Liverpool mop tops would have probably been enlisted by then. Overall, what could have been a decent film that matched the books content etc ended up looking like it had been made by three different directors. Finally, the Grand idea of a new Berlin and Germania just does not come across in the lazy production values. So, what could have come across as a really interesting and scary alternative future for Europe and the USA falls flat on its face I fear.

The novel had rising suspense up to the last page, with glimpses of real love amid multiple layers of black treachery, and an unspeakable dark secret at its heart. It was based on solid history, extrapolated into a fascinating alternative that was gradually revealed. Only bit by bit did one realise that Germany had conquered all Europe and that the Kennedy who had been elected US president was the unadmirable Joseph.None of that will you find in this feeble film, which even Dan Brown might be ashamed of. Showing the ghastly structures with which Hitler if victorious proposed to uglify Berlin, the Hall of the People and the Victory Arch, was at least instructive. Use your brain enjoyably for a couple of hours by reading the book instead.

This is a great film, The plot follows the novel throughout but some Christian and western influence is added. This spoils the tag line from my opinion.Comparing this film with the novel might not be fair. The novel is great and this film is also, but in different way.The visual effects are great as well as the acting. 60s Nazi Reich spirit is captured well. The Third Reich painted in the film is credible, and very nice attention is paid to the details.I'd suggest watching this film first and then reading the Robert Harris' novel. That way you'll get the best of the both.I've been waiting for about ten years to see the filmation, and this was a bit of a disappointment. Seeing the Auschwitz death camps in person last year was a shocking experience. They're preserved in extraordinary way by the Polish. I'd suggest all the viewers to visit the survived concentration and extermination camps and feel the "spirit" of the Nazi Germany. It's a life-changing experience for you even if you are a extreme right believer or a person interested in the history.The movie alone 9/10, compared to the novel 6/10.

Okay, to dig holes in what would make a glorious 'what if..?' means to do just that, dig holes. Apart from good performances from Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson and the rest of the cast, even if you accept the changearound, it's still too laughable around the historical facts we DO know about.Germany has won the war (Nazi Germany - that's important!). It's 20 years on, Churchill has buggered off to Canada leaving a capitulated Britain and guess what, America pulled out of Europe in the all - important 1944 and decides on a 'kind of' pact with Nazi Germany (As if - I know the west encouraged Saddam Hussein on the throne then kindly made him look the enemy, but this is still stretching it). Oh and by the way, Der Fuhrer, yes, the same one, Adolf Hitler is still alive at 75 (Nice catchphrase). A young American journo, Miranda Richardson is covering the forthcoming state visit of American president Joe Kennedy (It is fictional, remember) where Hitler will negotiate further with him on their wonderful pact, which incidentally, forgets that Germany is STILL fighting the war in Russia. (Maybe this is meant to show America's hate of commies and they'd rather except Nazism - another 'as if'!). In actual fact America's contrast is that the world knows nothing of the concentration camps/Nazi atrocities etc, which are about to come out in the plot. SS Chief of Police, Xavier March (Rutger Hauer) teams up with Miranda Richardson's 'Charlie MacGuire' after a lot of new facts surface and deaths occur within the Nazi idyll (Yes, idyll, another what if, as if). March finds himself isolated, on the run, because, even 20 years ago, when he served the Fuhrer lovingly in the navy, (Like they all did and denied later) he's disillusioned with the cover up of the systematic brutality of the Nazi regime. Had he known, he says, he wouldn't have served his beloved leader (Not in my name etc). He's presented with photos of the death camps that Charlie has unearthed and they both end up running from the SS/Gestapo. They manage to hand the pics to the president just as he's going to meet Hitler on a kind of Nuremburg platform. Then the deal's off, of course and a footnote, from March's son, whom he tried to abscond with, with Charlie to the USA says it's then that the Nazi regime collapses - because America knows now, or because ordinary Germans can't abide what had happened - not fully explained! We're led to believe the former, methinks!This is tripe of the first class. Firstly, it forgets Hitler had Parkinson's disease and must have had a miraculous recovery. Another fairyland tale is Hauer's sympathetic SS officer. That's an SS officer - the daily indoctrination of Aryan supremacy, untermenschen and fanaticism never featured in his upbringing nor had any influence on the fact he's made it to an SS police chief! Other factors including mention of the Americans dropping the atom bomb on Japan defy belief that if they had it they wouldn't have threatened Germany with it and would rather pull out of Europe. Another crappy piece is, I know that WE know the holocaust happened, but the presentation of the photos to Joe Kennedy showing a few emaciated bodies, however familiar to us, didn't, in reality, mean they had been instigated by the Nazis, in a big enough form. Nor was the way Charlie broke the cordon, just by pushing through and getting to the President believable - okay, I know someone shot Lincoln and Reagan, but still!It was a very cheap and poor production, with about a handful of 'Germans' making up for a crowd scene of Nuremburg-like proportions. It had all the premise of a TV movie and it shows. About the only saving grace for me, was that it showed Hitler's utopian new Berlin , or 'Germania' as he intended it named. It showed his and Speer's visionary architectural fatherland - sorry - fairyland and it's only for that that I gave this a 'four'!