It is the early 1930s and the disillusioned young writer Jakob Fabian is wandering the streets of Berlin. All around him he sees poverty and discontent; people stand in long lines in front of the unemployment office. Fabian calls himself a moralist, but he can no longer find the good in people. During the day he sells his soul to an advertising agency, at night he lets his wealthy friend Labude drag him into the decadent Berlin nightlife, past brothels and burlesque shows. Until suddenly in the middle of this grim world the great love stands in front of him.
That’s the story of Fabian, the autobiographical novel by Erich Kästner from 1931. The book can be read as a warning, a foreshadowing of the misery that will follow. The explicit and melancholy style of Kästner’s original version caused the publisher to delete a number of chapters at the time – although the book remained ‘amoral’ enough to later end up on the Nazis’ pyre. Only in 2013 got Fabian his original version back under the title Der Gang vor die Hunde (To the sharks). Director Dominik Graf based his film version on this, which premiered last year at the Berlin International Film Festival and can be seen in Dutch cinemas from this week.
Graf didn’t want anyone else for the lead role than Tom Schilling (40), the Berlin actor with the bright blue eyes and sultry acting style who broke through internationally in 2012 with Oh Boy (A Coffee in Berlin), for which he won both the German and European Film Prizes for Best Actor. But he’s been acting for as long as he can remember, says Schilling – track jacket, stubble – via video link from his home in Berlin. ‘A number of times film scouts came to my primary school in East Berlin, and they always pointed me in one way or another. For years acting was mostly something that happened to me, I felt like some kind of cute mascot that people liked to look at. It took a long time before I realized that maybe it was also a talent, that I could really convey something.’
Historical figures
Schilling has played a number of illustrious Germans, such as the poet Bertolt Brecht in the television series Brecht (2019), an artist based on the great painter Gerhard Richter in Werk Ohne Autor (Never Look Away) (2018) and even a young Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf (2009). But imitating someone perfectly is not his forte. ‘I am most at ease when I can express a lot of myself in a role and do not have to hide behind a mask. For example, I’m not going to torture myself with exactly imitating Brecht’s accent, because that takes too much of my energy while playing. Moreover, there is always someone who says: no, he didn’t really sound like that.’ Pained look: ‘I would rather not play historical figures anymore, people are often so strict…’
Not only the viewers are strict, Schilling himself also sets high standards for himself. He calls his preparation process ‘almost manic’. ‘In lara (2019) for example, I was a concert pianist performing with Chopin, the Revolution étude† And I thought it was so important to be able to play that piece perfectly myself. You could call that ridiculous, because it could easily have been solved differently. But that’s how it works for me: only if I go to piano lessons every day for months and practice myself to death, I feel a bit like a real pianist while playing. A character’s experiences and feelings have to be stored in my body, so that they come out on their own at the right time.’
doubt
Schilling chooses his roles intuitively, he says, depending on what’s going on in his life at the time. ‘Then Fabian came by, I had lost my fire a bit. I had had too high hopes for a number of projects and had been disappointed. I doubted everything: whether I still wanted to bend myself for a role and also whether I … how do I say this without sounding pathetic … whether I had anything to say as an actor at all.’ The sadness and emptiness he felt suited Fabian’s role wonderfully, he says. “That whole ‘world is going to hell’ feeling, and that tragic love story: I knew right away that I could do something with him. In retrospect, my Fabian may have become even sadder than the one from the book, haha.’
In addition, he always wanted to work with director Dominik Graf, whom he calls ‘unrivaled in Germany’ because of his many well-made TV series and films. Graf is a great romantic, a master of sensuality and tenderness. I was sure the love story between Fabian and Cornelia (Saskia Rosendahl) was going to be really deep with him, not tacky or kitsch.”
The feeling was mutual: in an interview, Graf said of Schilling that he only wanted him as Fabian because of his “linguistic cleverness, his sensitivity, his critical mind and his great desire to lose himself in love.” Schilling: ‘I am very moved, how he says that. Which director looks so precisely at actors, at people he doesn’t know? I don’t think my own wife could even describe me that aptly.’
There were doubts, among other things, whether he was not repeating himself too much with the role of Fabian, who is clearly related to Niko Fischer from oh boy. Also in that role, Schilling is a searching young man who wanders aimlessly through Berlin, only in the present. ‘That did scare me, yes. That everyone would then say: we’ve already seen that. But Dominik Graf insisted that it’s nothing to be ashamed of if you’ve really mastered a certain type. Acting is nowadays seen as a bit of top sport, it has to be higher, faster, further and the more you lose yourself, the better. But maybe that’s not better at all.’
His preparation for Fabian did not consist of an extensive study of the end of the Weimar Republic or of the writer Kästner. It was more important to build a close bond with his fellow players. ‘The film really revolves around the relationship between Fabian and Cornelia, but also that with his friend Labude (Albrecht Schuch). So the three of us went out a lot, we swam together in a lake, just like in the movie. But it also felt strange and unreal, because you know you just want to get that close for that part.”
Radical
‘I think I can come across as a bit of a sociopath in that too, because I always slam the door shut after turning. I immediately forget everyone who cooperated, I usually don’t even go to the prom.’ Why so radical? ‘That’s a good question. I think because I’ve been in movies from a young age, and developed so much love for the people I worked with the first few times: I was just working with them, I dreamed about them at night. But when the spinning was over, it all suddenly stopped. I think I’ve learned to avoid falling into that black hole again.’
Meanwhile, the actor has not taken on any roles for almost two years, since Fabian the right one has not presented itself. He does make music and a new album by his band, Die Andere Seite, was released at the end of April. For the single Das Song Vom Ich he directed the clip himself. ‘That was so much fun to do, who knows, maybe I’ll do it again.’
Whether he, who is always so critical, is satisfied with Fabian† Yes! I think it’s beautiful, I was very relieved about that. The editing is fantastic, and that beautiful literary voice-over: ‘Fabian didn’t know it yet, but in five minutes love would present itself…’ Brilliant.’ Is he also satisfied with himself as Fabian? ‘Sure, but that also depends on the editing… with such good editing you can make even mediocre actors look very good.’