The Weather in Berlin

Ward Just's leading men are likely to be middle-aged to elderly gents of some renown who favor Borsalino hats -- hats under which some intriguing ruminations are to be found. "The Weather in Berlin" finds our man to be an accomplished Hollywood movie director in Berlin to spend time at an institute. His renown is based largely on a film he shot in Germany several years earlier, and this gains him acceptance into a group of filmmakers shooting episodes of a highly popular sort of period soap opera in a house near the institute. The book has to do with this relationship, which occasions a discussion of the shooting of his notable film and other things of concern and interest to Germans and filmmakers. The author writes so well that it's easy to forgive the improbably high quality of dialog some of his characters utter. What is presented as extemporaneous conversation often seems a bit too insightful and well edited. Notable is a scene in which a 15- or possibly 20-year-old village girl who claims little knowledge of films reels off a concise and astute summary and evaluation of Werner Herzog's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" during a casual chitchat with our director protagonist. Of course, this is his recollection of a conversation from years earlier, which might excuse its literary quality.

I'd almost given up hope. With so much fluff out there, I finally read a story about a middle-age adult who isn't wading in gore or reliving his adolescent sex fantasies. He actually has complex thoughts, a complex life, and moves in communities of people with opinions. A great book. How did he ever get it published?

The Weather in Berlin offers a tight portrait of post-war(s) Germany and strangley, current day Hollywood. How are dreams realized and at what expense? How different is the psyche of a director or a dictator within their self-generated worlds of audiences/volk, leader and led? Explore the subtle words and beauty of this fine novel. The Prussian past is really not that far from Hollywood and Vine.Well worth the read and well worth the work.

I was not familiar with Ward Just's work until I happened upon "A Dangerous Friend," a very interesting novel about America's early involvement in Vietnam. Like that book, The Weather in Berlin has both a compelling plot and an immersive atmosphere. I strongly advise against reading the book jacket, or any review that tells you too much about the plot. Suffice it to say that the protagonist is a movie director who is famous for a 70's film about Germany in the 1920's, which became a cult favorite.Having "lost his audience" since then, he returns to Berlin for a period of time at an Institute, and from that point on there are many interesting developments and observations on topics as diverse as directors and actors, Germany today and between the two great wars, European views of America and Russia, love and death, etc. But such a summary does not do justice to the atmosphere Just establishes, and to the way he somewhow manages to engage you totally in the plot while avoiding simplistic expressions of political ideologies and why people think and behave the way they do.I haven't read a more compelling novel in years, and A Dangerous Friend is an excellent companion piece -- totally different frame of reference, same insights into character and history. I once read that the author Brian Moore (another favorite) "never wrote the same book twice." I haven't read all of Ward Just (I will), but I place him in Brian Moore's category -- just a wonderful writer and observer of human nature, whose minor characters are more "real" than many of the major characters in lesser fiction. This is literature at its best.