The Director is fiction based on historical data.
Most characters in the novel were real people; others are quite masterfully created
by Kehlmann, e.g. Pabst’s son Jakob (the filmmaker and his wife actually had
two boys, named Michael and Peter). The background to the story is the dreadfully
extreme circumstances under which Pabst had to work for the Nazi regime. It is
a poignant tale about the deep connection between Art and Morality.
No chapter describes this soul-wrecking tension affecting the
artist better than ‘Molander’. Pabst began filming Der Fall Molander in
occupied Prague in 1944. As the final scenes are being shot, the German troops
are leaving the city and Pabst finds himself short of extras. The solution?
Bring in scores of Jewish men and women from the nearest concentration camp.
While filming the extras acting as the audience in a concert hall, his
assistant, Franz Wilzek, recognises the doctor who used to treat him when he
was ill as a child. Pabst explains: “All this madness, Franz, this diabolical
madness, gives us the chance to make a great film. Without us, everything would
be the same, no one would be saved, no one would be better off. And the film wouldn’t
exist.” (p. 270)
History tells us that the film was lost. No copies of it
have ever been found. Kehlmann, however, constructs a gripping tale of escape
for the director and his assistant, surviving the fire from Czech sharpshooters
on their way to the railway station and finally boarding a train headed for
Vienna. On the train, a mix-up of military sacks takes place and when they
arrive at their destination, they find the bag they thought contained the film
rolls is full of horseshoes.
The Director opens in the late 1970s Austria, with a
very aged Franz Wilzek leaving his aged care home to attend an interview on a
popular Sunday morning TV show. His memory seriously deteriorated, he provides
absurd answers or fails to understand what he is being asked. The mention of Der
Fall Molander, however, makes him react somewhat defensively at first, then
outright aggressively, denying the film was ever made.
There are three sections named 'Inside', 'Outside', and 'After'.
The first narrates Pabst’s time in Hollywood and France; the second takes him
and his wife Trude back to Austria, already under the Nazi regime; the final
section, set in the postwar years, deals with the final stages of Pabst’s career
as a filmmaker. In the final chapter, Kehlmann entertains the possibility that
Wilzek had kept the sack with the film rolls of Der Fall Molander hidden
from the world.
The Director is a great satirical novel, enormously imaginative in its structure, the narrative points of view adopted and its language. Personally, I found absolutely enjoyable the way Kehlmann depicts the murky moral ambiguity of a movie maker struggling to make art under the Nazis. It makes you wonder about the red lines art can cross. If pushed to its limits, the idealistic notion of art for art’s sake leads to heartlessness and cruelty. Is it too high a price to pay? What do you think?
Si esta reseña en inglés ha despertado tu interés en la novela, el libro ya ha sido publicado este año en castellano por Random House como El Director, con traducción a cargo de Isabel García Adanez. Al igual que en la (por cierto, excelente traducción al inglés de Ross Benjamin), la traducción al castellano evita el aprieto de traducir el título original del alemán, Lichtspiel.
