Farewell (2009)

Directed by: Ditteke Mensink | 90 minutes | documentary

From an early age, image researcher Gerard Nijssen has been fascinated by zeppelins. So when he comes up with the plan to make a film that consists solely of historical images, it is not that difficult to choose a subject. Ditteke Mensink, with whom he had collaborated shortly before, then takes over the direction. As a common thread, Mensink uses the secret love story between Lady Grace Drummond-Hay, who is the only woman among forty employees and twenty passengers in the service of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst to report on her experiences on board the zeppelin, and the older, married journalist Karl von Wiegand. Nijssen digs through many archives in search of precisely those images that fit this story. On the basis of the approximately six hundred letters that Lady Grace wrote to Karl Von Wiegand, Mensink writes a text in which the thoughts and feelings of Lady Grace are explained during the journey, the British actress Poppy Elliott then reads these texts as if she Lady Grace. Since almost all movie clips are mute, sounds are added to them. The result of all this diligent work makes it possible, so many years later, to experience this wonderful journey up close, to travel around the world with the Graf Zeppelin, starting and ending in New York.

‘Farewell’ shows the zeppelin in its full glory. You see the first start of the construction where someone is working on the pier at the top, very far down you see someone who is working on the bottom, so it becomes clear how big this airship actually is. Then the great adventure begins. The airship gracefully rises for a journey around the world, it glides majestically through the sky high above everything and everyone, also a fairytale experience for the viewer. The adventures along the way are exciting, such as when the airship runs aground near an uninhabited island after a heavy storm, or moving, when a wreath is dropped over the Belgian town of Ypres in memory of the German soldiers who fell there during the First World War. . Seeing so many beautiful and special things, it is almost with a heavy heart to realize that the love story on which the entire story is based is precisely the weak link in this extremely careful composition of images. Through Poppy Elliott you hear what Lady Grace experiences and think and you see all kinds of images, but those images and text do not have the mutual connection that makes it possible to feel this forbidden love, they are and remain two separate things.

The worst part is that because of this love story, the film doesn’t end in the most obvious and natural way with the festive entry into New York, but that there is still a piece that just dangles and that too. sentimental is almost draconian. Not even the often enchanting music of Paul M. van Brugge can help with that. Nevertheless, ‘Farewell’ is a poetic ode to the bygone era of the zeppelin, a beautiful image of the time in which it was still exciting to learn about such an air journey around the earth through newspaper reports, as if you were traveling on board such a airship and hover over everything and everyone, like a king of the skies.