The Director tells the story of G W Pabst, the German director who returned to Nazi Germany having earlier fled to California, a place where he didn’t fit in and his only film is a flop. Pabst directed Brooks and Garbo, amongst other names. He had a prolific career in Germany and France. He was one of a bunch of great German/ Austrian directors, including Lang, Wilder, Zimmerman and others, a collection which helped to shape Hollywood. He also worked with Riefenstahl. His accommodation with the Nazis was not held against him and he directed after the war. Kehlmann is given a rich palette to paint with and he uses it in part to interrogate the Holocaust in an oblique manner.
Curiously, the novel reminded me structurally of another recent Booker nominated novel by a European writer, Szalay’s Flesh. Both novels use disconnected chapters to relate the life of a man occupying an ambivalent role within their moral universes. Neither writer outright condemns or outright defends his protagonist. The construction of a life through discordant passages (a bricolage) is a neat way to knit together an historical overview, which doesn’t require too much scene setting and permits the narrative to flow.
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