Like other biopics about famous writer and artists,this film tried and succeeded to achieve a balance between sheer,dull biographical information and the complex process of their own creative mind. It shows how intensely Thomas Mann and his numerous,gifted and controversial family lived a century which saw the fall of the German Empire,the rise of the Third Reich,two world wars,the McCarthy trials(in which even the literature of Thomas and Heinrich Mann was seen as subversive,as it was seen a decade earlier,when the Nazis publicly burned their books) Armin Mueller-Stahl's performance as Thomas Mann is particularly convincing,somewhat resembling to the haunting depiction of Thomas Mann's character(and alter-ego) Gustav Von Aschenbach in Visconti's Death in Venice,beautifully crafted by Dirk Bogarde.Even some hints at Thomas Mann's purely platonic homo-erotic desires and experiences are showed,which makes the resemblance to Death in Venice even more obvious.Another movie with whom this might be compared is Fitzgerald and the last of the belles-in a similar way,both movies are built upon several opposites joined together bourgeois versus artist,reality versus fiction,ideal versus everyday life. Inspite of minor flaws(concerning mostly the physical resemblance and behavior of several actors and the real life characters),this film contains enough biographical material,brought to the viewer in a both exact,unbiased and entertaining,interesting manner.
