Other Titles • Abschied - Brechts letzter Sommer • The Farewell (2000)
Synopses for Abschied - Brechts letzter Sommer (2000)
1.
Superb acting is the primary reason to see The Farewell, an incisive portrait of playwright/poet Bertolt Brecht. As directed by Jan Schütte, this German domestic drama is not a dry, documentary-like profile but rather an elegy of Brecht spanning one single day, just three days before Brecht's death in the summer of 1956. The once-towering giant of German theater (played to perfection by Josef Bierbichler) is preparing to leave his lakeside cottage in the East German town of Bukow and return to Berlin for the new theater season, but a storm is brewing on the home front: Having maintained no fewer than three mistresses at any one time during his adult life, Brecht is now in the midst of dissent among his extended family of women including his wife, daughter, current and former mistresses, and a political reformer who shares his wife with Brecht in a personal arrangement that's starting to unravel at the seams. With German secret police poised to arrest two of Brecht's houseguests for high treason, the idyllic cottage becomes a setting for petty jealousies, violated trusts and the final remnants of hope and tenderness in the writer's circle of intimates. It's a sad but moving film of an artist in decline, not for all tastes but rewarding for anyone who's curious about the eccentric lives of artists and Brecht in particular. --Jeff Shannon
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