Book adaptations are a very delicate matter, they like to piss off. The new adaptation of the chess novella filmed by Philipp Stölzl is convincing across the board.
Berlin – Erich Kästner, Thomas Mann and now Stefan Zweig: German-speaking cinema is particularly keen to watch great German-speaking authors this late summer.
It all kicked off with the Kästner adaptation “Fabian or The Walk to the Dogs” by director Dominik Graf, which was filmed by Detlev Buck at the beginning of September. Now the impressive, the harrowing psychogram of someone indomitable is coming to the cinemas: the remake of the “Schachnovelle”.
It is the text that was to become a kind of farewell letter from Stefan Zweig: Only months after completing the barely 90 page long work on a former Gestapo prisoner, the humanist and pacifist committed suicide in exile in Brazil in 1942. The adaptation for the adaptation comes from Philipp Stölzl; Oliver Masucci plays the not exactly easy leading role. Birgit Minichmayr and Albrecht Schuch are also there.
In 1934, Stefan Zweig, who came from a Jewish family and was born in Vienna, left Austria, which had been terrorized by the National Socialists, for England. Similar to his literary role model, the adaptation made by Stölzl (“Nordwand”, “I’ve never been to New York”) begins with the protagonist Josef Bartok (Masucci) going into exile in South America during the Nazi era. The review that soon begins reveals all the ordeals he had to endure before. Among them, above all, the months-long “special treatment” in the Hotel Métropole by the Nazis, in the film mainly represented by a nasty polite and deeply diabolical Albrecht Schuch (“Berlin Alexanderplatz”).
How Bartok (in the text template: “Dr. B.”) tries to defy the mental isolation in custody by means of replayed chess games: In return, the 112-minute film finds deeply moving images. However, they get a special effect through Oliver Masucci – it is an actor who embodied a rather fascinating figure based on Joseph Beuys in the controversial “work without an author” by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and only in the last few years, almost surprisingly, became one of the most exciting local movie actors. And that although Masucci is already 52 years old.
Good acting, however, also requires good, congenial leadership: Director Stölzl, who has staged operas and music videos, shows himself from his best side. In addition, there is a moving, fascinating sound design that underlines the atrocity methods shown in the film from the Nazi era.
Much more than about Ingmar Bergman’s classic of chess cinema, “The Seventh Seal”, one has to be famous about Terrence Malicks in this new adaptation (in 1960 a film adaptation of the “Schachnovelle” starring Curd Jürgens was released) Think far too little noticed film “A Hidden Life” from 2019. There August Diehl gives Bartoks a kindred spirit – one who is similarly steadfast towards the Nazi terror.
Compared to the Thomas Mann adaptation “Felix Krull”, which has just started, this Stefan Zweig adaptation develops a much stronger pull, it is much more gripping and compelling than Detlev Buck’s unfortunately somewhat too clumsy Mann adaptation. “Everything I was able to give,” says a letter from Stefan Zweig, “I owe to a certain enthusiasm; I knew how to drag others along … ”. How true.
– Schachnovelle, Germany / Austria 2021, 112 min., FSK from 12, by Philipp Stölzl, with Oliver Masucci, Birgit Minichmayr, Albrecht Schuch. dpa
