Status: 05.03.2021 12:47 p.m.
Director Dominik Graf has made a new film from Erich Kästner’s novel “Fabian”. The film was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale and is expected to hit cinemas in early July.
Erich Kästner wrote his novel set in Berlin in 1931. Dominik Graf stages the material with references to the present day and opens his “Fabian” with a grandiose sequence in which he visually travels from today’s capital to the then.
“We are all on the same train and travel across time. We look out and see enough. We are all on the same train and nobody knows how far.”
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The camera goes down the stairs to a historic subway station with wagons and people from today and arrives walking up the stairs in Berlin in the 1930s.
Tom Schilling and Albrecht Schuch play the main roles
Albrecht Schuch (here with Saskia Rosendahl) plays Fabian’s wealthy friend Labude.
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On the other side, Jakob Fabian, portrayed by Tom Schilling, is waiting for the viewer. We accompany him on his way through the city. During the day Fabian works in the advertising department of a cigarette factory, at night he wanders through the pubs and brothels, often together with his wealthy friend Labude, as always wonderfully embodied by Albrecht Schuch. Fabian is a moralist and pessimist, but then he falls in love and introduces Cornelia to his friend:
“She wants to be an actress.” – “Another one?” – “I dream at night that I will lose them and I am ashamed of the fear.”
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For his part, Labude has already lost his lover and is drifting through life more and more unstable, but gives Fabian and Cornelia his blessing.
“Fraulein Cornelia Battenberg, I hereby give you my permission for a marriage-like alliance with Jakob Fabian, who is present here. If, contrary to expectations, Mr. Fabian should not prove to be suitable, you will pass into my possession without delay.”
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Jakob Fabian is dismissed and left
While Labude was able to squander his family’s money, Fabian fell victim to the large wave of layoffs. And soon afterwards, Cornelia also announced future prospects for him, because her career as an actress is more important to her. So important that she enters into a more than professional relationship with a much older man. The powerful film producer makes her a star, while Fabian, Labude and the rest of their old world, shortly before Hitler comes to power, have bad things to fear:
“Are you threatened?” – “The world is going to the dogs, everything has to come into a new order, it can’t go on like this!”
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“Fabian” with original quotes from Erich Kästner’s novel
Similar to Burhan Qurbani’s adaptation of “Berlin Alexanderplatz” to the novel, Dominik Graf mixes original quotes from Erich Kästner’s novel into the film, with a narrative voice from the off. The rampant hustle and bustle of Berlin’s nightlife is also portrayed in a very extravagant manner. This dance on the volcano is often reminiscent of “Babylon Berlin”, especially when Meret Becker, who also starred in the hit series, storms a club stage here naked under a fur coat.
The emotional journey through time that Dominik Graf stages is filled to the brim with its partly coarse-grained images and dense soundtrack – but with its three-hour running time, one thing above all: by a third too long.
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