The Patriot picks up where Germany in Autumn leaves off: “The viewer knows the history teacher, Gabi Teichert, from Germany in Autumn,” writes Alexander Kluge. “In that film the scene is a snow-covered landscape. Gabi Teichert is digging. ‘Either she's digging herself a foxhole for World War III, or she's digging in search of German History'.... The Patriot continues the story of Gabi Teichert. Now she's digging deeper.” At issue in The Patriot is the obstacle presented to the new generation in coming to terms with its national identity when faced with a history that has been misrepresented in service to the state, and to an ideology of suppression. Kluge's non-narrative style--a montage of documentary footage, fairytale illustrations and acted sequences--in itself suggests the tools which Gabi Teichert will need to obtain a new perspective: new contexts, references and juxtapositions. And the spectator is gradually placed in the role of Gabi Teichert.
Kluge's rich imagination is nowhere more obvious than in the choice of the narrator for The Patriot: the film is narrated by the knee of one Private 1st Class Wieland, who died at Stalingrad. “From the perspective of a dead knee,” says Kluge, “a few things in German History look a bit different.” This anatomical joint acts as a link between the dead, anonymous past that Teichert teaches as History in her classroom, and the present that she seeks to explain out of school.