The Director | Daniel Kehlmann

Daniel Kehlmann's, The Director, is the fictionalised story of the Austrian filmmaker, G. W. Pabst, who is detained in Germany at the outbreak of World War II. The novel weaves art and history together and questions the idea of complicity. Pabst, despite his resistance, is forced to create propaganda films for the Nazi regime in order to survive. Kehlmann presents a nuanced portrayal of Pabst, offering some redemption for his small acts of defiance. He reserves his sharpest condemnation for Leni Riefenstahl and Alfred Karrasch, who each embraced Nazi ideology without showing any remorse.

The book opens and closes with Franz Wilzek, Pabst's dementia-ridden assistant. The ending reveals that Wilzek had hidden the lost film all along was a clever twist I didn't see coming, though as a whole, the book was lacking in emotional depth. THe book is darkly funny in places, but I never managed to fully immerse myself in teh way I had hoped. It's a well written historical fiction novel about the cost of art under tyranny.