Fatherland (film)
A 1994 movie based on a 1992 novel by Robert Harris.
In 1964 within an alternate timeline where Hitler won the war, Hitler invites U.S. president Joseph P. Kennedy (JFK's father) to his 75th birthday celebrations, hoping to reach a détente that helps beating the Russian partisans.
Meanwhile a number of high ranking Nazi officers are found or getting killed, in order to remove the final obstacle to détente, the blackmailable existence of the last witnesses of the biggest secret of the war, the Final Solution.
The movie deals with Charlotte Maguire, an American journalist, Franz Luther, the last witness contacting Maguire, and Xavier March (played by Rutger Hauer), a good-natured police investigator digging deeper than Gestapo deems acceptable to solve the case.
Tropes used in Fatherland (film) include:
- Adaptation Distillation: The movie simplifies the book's plot heavily, seems to mess with historical fact a good deal and makes the ending a lot more happy and victorious.
- Alternate History
- Artistic License History: The German on some of the wallpapers, Hitler's signature on a framed photo, too modern cars (it's still meant to be set in the 60s, not the 90s), etc. Also, it's rather funny that a lot of the furnishings seen in some of the apartments are very obviously from Communist era Czechoslovakia (which of course couldn't have existed in the movie's and book's verse).
- The film portrays Joseph P. Kennedy as a man sympathetic to the Jews and is disgusted when he finds out the truth, calling off the meeting with Hitler at the very last minute after Charlie gives him the documents. In reality, Joseph P. Kennedy was an open Nazi sympathizer and open admirer of Hitler, an anti-Semite and didn't feel as if the US should fight the Nazis. No doubt that if the film followed historical fact, the documents would not have made a difference.
- What's that got to do with it? He's a politician, and a journalist just handed him information that could throw a shadow over his attempt at detente. It seems like he just did the politically smart thing and got out of there. Besides the film does mention JPK's opposition to the war, and never says anything on whether he liked Jews. And I think anyone would look horrified when he saw those photos.
- There is also a poster for "Die Beatles" seen in the movie. While the book does reference an unnamed rock band forming in Britain around this same time, it is unlikely that the same four men would have formed the exact same band given a 20-year divergence in history. Although they could have.
- In the book, I Want to Hold Your Hand (as in the Beatles song) is heard on a radio at one point. There's also enough hints given that if they're not the actual Beatles then they're close enough to make no real difference.
- A German soldier is shown with a bolt-action rifle instead of an Stg44 or maybe a G3 assault rifle. He's a ceremonial guard though, so it might be excused (such weapons handle better for drill movements).
- The premise of Nazi victory is changed from the book, with a German victory during the 1944 Normandy invasion now cited as the sole turning point. Cue a Face Palm from World War II buffs, who are usually a bit more aware of just how hopeless Germany's military situation was by the summer of 1944, successful D-Day landing or no.
- Even the geographic dimensions of the Nazi empire are peculiar, based on the map shown in the beginning. Basically all of continental Europe west of the Ukraine has been subsumed into an expanded German empire, when much of this was never the Nazis' intentions. Historians discovered that the Nazis did in fact desire to incorporate nations such as Norway and the Netherlands because of the racist Nordic ideology inherent in Nazism, but one can only speculate whether countries such as Spain, Italy, France, or Greece wouldn't ultimately have been annexed into the Third Reich if they already controlled everything else (which they don't in this timeline). During the war the focus of Nazist expansionism was directed towards Eastern Europe because they believed the Slavs to be "an inferior race", and consequently thought it needed to be conquered, depopulated, and resettled with Germans, who were supposedly in need of "living space". The book follows these events correctly.
- The film portrays Joseph P. Kennedy as a man sympathetic to the Jews and is disgusted when he finds out the truth, calling off the meeting with Hitler at the very last minute after Charlie gives him the documents. In reality, Joseph P. Kennedy was an open Nazi sympathizer and open admirer of Hitler, an anti-Semite and didn't feel as if the US should fight the Nazis. No doubt that if the film followed historical fact, the documents would not have made a difference.
- Blackmail
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Xavier: I was thinking of asking interal affairs... |
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- California Doubling - Besides the world capital Germania shots being completely artificial, the whole movie was shot in Prague and its environs. The shown Reichssicherheitshauptamt building was e.g. actually the site of the Czechoslovak parliament and later Radio Free Europe and the Adolf Hitler statue was placed in front of the Rudolfinum.
- Crapsack World
- Disconnected by Death - Invoked. An already wounded Xavi cycles to a phone booth to call Pili before his certain death to tell him that it wasn't his fault.
- Earn Your Happy Ending - March gets killed, Gestapo came for Charlie, but Kennedy got the proof of the Holocaust, called off the meeting with Hitler, didn't help the Reich and latter soon collapsed.
- As opposed to the novel, where Xavier manages to find the torn-down remnants of Auschwitz right before being killed by the Gestapo and Charlie only manages to board a plane back to the US with the documents before the end.
- Film of the Book
- Forensic Drama
- From a Certain Point of View - Kind of. Rather the creepiest euphemism in movie history.
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Anna von Hagen: Will you finally do something about your Jews as we did with ours? |
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- Government Conspiracy - In-universe, the biggest one in history.
- He Knows Too Much - The Movie
- Heroic BSOD
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Xavier: I've been a loyal son of my fatherland. I served murderers all my life. |
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- Heroic RROD - The Eastern Front veterans in the house of the blind.
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Fellow inmate: It's true! You must be blind of an eye apple to see! |
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- Hey, It's That Guy!: Christopher Foyle is still a cop, no matter where or when.
- Humans Are Bastards - Of course.
- I Coulda Been a Contender - Anna von Hagen when displaying her bitterness about failing in her acting career.
- In Spite of a Nail - As mentioned above, the Beatles still form despite twenty years of Alternate History.
- Intrepid Reporter - Charlie
- Literary Agent Hypothesis - In-universe with the last surviving attendant of Wannsee, Franz Luther.
- Make It Look Like an Accident - The death of SS cadet Jost jr.
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Jäger: He was training at the gym, he fell, broke his neck. |
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- Narrator All Along - He's only heard at the beginning and at the end, but it's still notable to say that the narrator is Pili, the son of Xavier March.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed : Though all Nazis named in the film indeed existed, the character of Martin Luther got the given name Franz in the movie to avoid connotations to another Martin Luther, a major religious reformer.
- Our Presidents Are Different: Joseph P. Kennedy is President.
- Police Procedural
- Punch Clock Villain - Played completely straight with the ordinary police officers.
- Putting on the Reich - The city of Welthauptstadt Germania, formerly known as Berlin. Nuff' said.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections
- Secret Police - The Gestapo is anywhere out there to fetch you.
- Those Wacky Nazis
- White Dwarf Starlet - Anna von Hagen
- You Killed My Father - Rather like I didn't know what I was doing when I phoned the Gestapo.