Zauberberg - Pilar Mata Dupont - Excerpts
A series of excerpts from my film 'Zauberberg', which I wrote, co-produced, and directed. 'Zauberberg' was nominated for two West Australian Screen Awards for Best Actress: Alex Malone, and Best Production Design: Bryan Woltjen. 'Zauberberg' follows the story and education of an inconsequential hero as she comes of age. Rose, an “ordinary, young woman”, arrives at a tuberculosis sanatorium for a three-week stay to visit her cousin, languishing in the mountain retreat. After being diagnosed with a “moist spot" in her lung, Rose becomes enchanted by the mountain and her fellow inmates, and increasingly becomes obsessed with her cousin, the good soldier, Joachim. When Joachim decides to leave the sanatorium to join his regiment, Rose’s obsession is set on a course that leads to her complete immersion in her life on the magic mountain, unable to leave, forgetting her past. Set in a theatrically staged sanatorium, its walls made from clear plastic strips like membranes that ripple and heave, 'Zauberberg' takes Thomas Mann’s 'The Magic Mountain' (1924) and turns it from a stifled coming of age story set in the years prior to World War I in a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps into an investigation of the glorification of war mythologies and the objectification and deification of the war hero.