In his interview with
The Hollywood Reporter, Ruzowitzky raised the “the challenges of making a 90-year-old story relevant.”
1See Roxborough, “It’s a Catastrophe.” Visionkino—a network for education in film and media literacy—published a booklet to be used in schools with pupils from age fifteen onwards. The reasoning is explained as follows:
Narcissus & Goldmund is one of Hermann Hesse’s most famous books. Stefan Ruzowitzky created a suspenseful drama for cinema with impressive images from a text that contains a lot of deep psychological reflections, showing that the better literary adaptation is often the one that intervenes in the narrative to do justice to the medium. The story has a timeless core as it tells of the conflicting lives of two people bound by what should be an impossible friendship. The updating of the material is also helped by the enhancement of some of the female characters: Women like Lene and Julia not only stand by Goldmund, who is running through life, they also oppose him when necessary, showing strength in a world where there is little room for female empowerment.
2“Filmheft NARZISS UND GOLDMUND,” Visionkino, https://www.visionkino.de/unterrichtsmaterial/filmhefte/filmheft-narziss-und-goldmund/ (accessed April 5, 2023). Marketing publications for the press and cinemas held at the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin indicate that screenings of Narcissus and Goldmund for schools were supposed to commence in late March 2020, but had to be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sony Pictures Marketing sent to cinemas in German-speaking countries highlighted the significance of Hesse and his work, but also stated incorrectly that Ruzowitzky’s is the first ever Hesse adaptation.
Linking the adaptation to secondary education is a common marketing strategy these days and often includes links to relevant teaching resources.
Narcissus and Goldmund is recommended when teaching not only German-language literature, but History, Ethics and Religion, as well as Psychology and Social Studies. Among the topics listed that could be discussed in the classroom are the meaning of friendship, art, and life as well as the time of the Middle Ages and the significance of psychology for a better understanding of human behavior. Friendship is indeed at the epicenter of this film. It is the bond between two boys, who grow into adults and while their lives take different paths, they both long for companionship and love. Spiritual and devout Narcissus here suffers the love for another man, unable to live his desires and find comfort in the company of his closest friend. While Hesse’s text refers to this challenge for a monk, Ruzowitzky highlights this trajectory. But rather than being explicit about homosexuality, according to the screenwriter/director, the film is about “bro culture” and emphasizes that this subculture or lifestyle is “definitely there in the book.”
3Roxborough, “It’s a Catastrophe.”It’s pretty obvious that one of the Bros—Narcissus—would like to be more than just friends and that the other, Goldmund, only has eyes for women. I made that a stronger, more emotional character element for Narcissus, that he suffers, in addition because he is such an intellectual, spiritual type, who sees himself as a man of the church who wants to ban his every emotion, all his own sexuality, because everything should belong to God. And then he falls in love with his best friend, which is just terrible for him. I emphasized that aspect of his character but it is very clearly there in the book, I didn’t make it up.
4Quoted in Roxborough, “It’s a Catastrophe.”