“So I slapped her in the face and left.” That’s what it says in the book, in Erich Kästner’s “Fabian” from 1931. Labude, Fabian’s best friend, has just observed his fiancee with another girl and found out that she had aborted a child. His or that of the other, he doesn’t know. What Dominik Graf makes out of this scene shows in the most beautiful way how he deals with the large, but also delicate classic model. The text that Labude speaks from the off is the same as in the book. But what you see is something else: Leda slaps Labude. Not the other way around.
It’s not far off to get the ninety-year-old “Fabian” out again. The present is often compared to the late Weimar Republic. The comparison is usually relativized or revised, but at first it seems obvious: decadence, precarious work, the right wing is gaining strength in the background.
What Dominik Graf made of Erich Kästner’s classic is a masterpiece. Which, on the one hand, is not entirely surprising given this director and his actors (Tom Schilling, Saskia Rosendahl, Albrecht Schuch). On the other hand, it is surprising. Because “Fabian” is not a timeless novel. It has a lot of topicality, Berliners are pleasure-seeking in it, lost souls perform in an underground nightclub and are ogled and scolded for a bit of attention. Some TV shows do the same today. Also, the genders fight. And the Nazis brutally cut through the night with their whistles.
When Fabian loses his job, he finds love, but she too is doomed
Kästner naturally described his world with the sensibilities of the time. The men are no less bad than the women, but in “Fabian” female morality depends almost exclusively on their sexuality. They are unfaithful, temptresses, have abortions and don’t really love, but somehow falsely and mendaciously. They prostitute themselves. And are rightly slapped. The reverse slap in the face that Dominik Graf stages is therefore not just a gag. It shows that the director sees this dilemma. The problem isn’t just women, it’s also an old notion of masculinity. Because of this, Labude lies when he tells Fabian that he hit Leda.
In general, women are much more important to Graf than to Kästner. The nymphomaniac Irene Moll, played half clever, half lost by Meret Becker, is not only a pitiable character, but also turns her addiction into a business and founds a men’s brothel. Fabian’s mother is caring but also resolute. And the poor artists who sell their bodies have formed a semi-viable community of mutual protection.
Saskia Rosendahl and Tom Schilling in “Fabian or The Walk to the Dogs”.
(Photo: DCM)
Of course, the focus is still on Fabian, the pessimistic, decent Germanist who prefers to observe than act. He hires himself out in the advertising department of a cigarette company. Tom Schilling was Graf’s preferred candidate for the role and you immediately understand why: his slightly moaning way of speaking, his tenacious tenderness, his seriousness make him a Fabian who doesn’t become sour with morality, but credibly despairs of the world. When Fabian loses his job, he finds love. She comes in the form of Saskia Rosendahl, who plays Cornelia in a wonderfully modern way. Smart, confident, vulnerable. And she shows this surprise by the love she had already wanted to give up, this overwhelmed being so real that you want to cry with her for joy and jump and giggle and dance the Schuhplattler. In bed, at the nightly post-coital meal in Fabian’s room and at the lake, in which she can swim but Fabian can’t.
Dominik Graf gives this beautiful love story more time, more air to breathe and grow than the novel before it is hit with the – perhaps – fatal blow: Cornelia’s affair with a film producer who promises her an acting career. In the background, in the cafés and on advertising pillars, it is written again and again: “Learn to swim!” on posters. It is the dark premonition of Fabian’s death, but also a metaphor for his suffering in the world. She calls out to people: adapt, play the game of exploitation and mendacity, even if you hate it. Otherwise you will go to the dogs. That’s what Graf finds so modern about “Fabian” in contrast to the sexual morality.
The times overlap in this film so skilfully that they become transparent. Graf didn’t make a pure costume film, but he doesn’t move the plot to the present either. Schilling, Rosendahl and the handsome Schuch look timeless, like they like to shop in vintage stores but get into vintage cars. The stumbling blocks shimmering dully under the feet of the studio ladies, which today commemorate the victims of the Holocaust that was imminent in the Berlin pavement. And the nasty faculty member responsible for Labude’s death wears the Nazi uniform in a brief foresight.
In the end, when Fabian still has hope that love with Cornelia could save them both and makes his way from the Dresden area to Berlin, he takes a detour to the train station. It leads through the forest, because Fabian is a romantic after all, and it leads past the river. There he jumps into the water to save a little boy, the boy can swim, Fabian can’t. In a final, silent, terrifying preview, one sees his notebook, which should have become a novel, burned on a pyre, just as Kästner’s works did in reality. One almost thinks: Better for him that way, Fabian is spared the worst. But the summer that is now going on without him makes it very, very difficult.
Fabian or The Walk to the Dogs, Monday, 10 p.m.
This review was first published in time for the film’s theatrical release in August 2021.