LOST ZWEIG

Germany, 2003, 115 minutes, Colour.
Rudiger Vogler, Ruth Riser, Daniel Dantas.
Directed by Sylvio Back.

Lost Zweig is based on a novel about the Austrian Jewish author. The film focuses on the last months of the Zweigs' life. After a second marriage and a strong career in Austria, especially as anti-Nazi, urging European unification as well as having an ambition to find a homeland for European Jews in Brazil, he moved to Brazil in 1936, wrote a best-selling book about it and was welcomed by the Vargas dictatorship. He returned to Brazil, hoping to get visas for many of his Jewish friends so that they could escape Nazi Germany and have a refuge and a homeland in Brazil.

He was joined by his publisher and friends. The film shows them and their friendship, the lifestyle in Brazil (which some attack because they were privileged whereas others, especially Jewish women, were lured into pretence marriages and sold into prostitution on their arrival in Brazil). The film shows the literary group in Brazil as well as an encounter with Orson Welles, in Brazil filming in Rio and the carnival.

Ultimately, Zweig felt betrayed by the dictatorship, having failed to get a homeland in Salazar's Portugal and then in Brazil. He and his ailing wife decided then that the most appropriate thing would be to end their lives.

Structurally, the news of their death comes in the middle of the film, which leaves audiences puzzling. There is a lot of argument about where they should be buried - Jewish rabbis considering that they had broken the law by their suicide, other rabbis thinking that they would be serving as an example of Jewish commitment in the difficult times of World War II. The second part of the film then speculates and dramatises the last hours of their life, the philosophical decision of Zweig to take his life, quoting Montaigne whom he was writing a biography of, as voluntary death being more beautiful. His wife, devoted to him, also takes her life.

1. The audience for this film? Literary audiences, philosophical? German, Austrian, Brazilian? Jewish audiences? The insight into the characters, his quest, his fidelity to Jewish visions?

2. The Brazilian settings, the re-creation of the '40s, the cities, the jungle? Rio and the carnival? The musical score, classics, contemporary Brazilian music?

3. The title, the reference to Zweig himself, what is known about him historically, the speculation on his suicide and last hours?

4. The structure of the film: Zweig returning to Brazil, his coterie of friends, life in Brazil, his political presentation to the president of the request to the homeland? The news of his suicide, the discussions about his burial? The final part of the film portraying Zweig and his wife and their motivation for their suicide?

5. The character of Zweig: his background in Austria, his first marriage thirty years earlier, his leaving his wife, his marrying again? His friendship with his first wife? Devotion to his second wife? His successful career in Austria, as Jewish, as a thinker, anti-Nazi, pacifist, the vision of unified Europe, a homeland for the Jews?

6. Zweig in Brazil, his home, comfortable, his range of friends, publishers? Their outings together, driving, at the carnival? His own personal life and his relationship with women, seeing the woman at the carnival, the woman at the post office, the prostitutes? His meeting with Orson Welles and their discussion about Brazil and the possibility of Utopia?

7. His friends, their characters, their support, trying to understand him, living with his moods? The devotion of his wife?

8. The news of the suicide, the rabbis and their discussions, the political ramifications, his body left in state, the woman putting the stamps over his body? His letter and his wanting to be buried in the Jewish cemetery without fuss? His not practising his religion, yet his fidelity to his Jewish vision?

9. The presentation of Zweig and his wife with the speculation of why they committed suicide? His disillusionment with the dictatorship, feeling that he had not been listening to his inner voice, his contempt for the foreign minister? The news that the war had changed after Pearl Harbor, the president was with the Americans, the Germans were refusing visas to the Jews to let them come to the homeland? His own work, his writing, his wonder and hopes in Brazil, his biography of Montaigne? His getting everything in order, the dialogue showing that he was ready to die, it was a better witness to other Jews, the beauty of a voluntary death? His wife following suit? The dinner, the phone call, the farewells, his taking his own life, his wife walking round the house, preparing herself for death? - the final postscript with the scene of the two of them watching the newsreel announcing their death?

10. A significant contribution to understanding Judaism, what Jews have suffered, their hopes, the experience of Europe in the first part of the 20th century? The potential for a homeland and the Utopia that might have been Brazil, and the ironies that it became a refuge for Nazis?