betting on laughter
by Douglas Messerli
Maren Ade (screenwriter and
director) Toni Erdmann / 2016
With the end of the Ringling
Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus, which recently gave its last performance,
we might also report the end of the great clowns. Yes, the circus was very much
about its animal acts—the tortured elephants, abused tigers and lions, and
misused camels and llamas—but, as I remember it as a child,
Now, if we believe the news reports and other media items, clowns are
dangerous beings who threaten women and young boys. Gone are the days, surely,
of mimes (I might add, “thank heaven”) who crafted their art on the basis of
clown figures.
More specifically, he is a kind of foolish Lear, still loving his
Cordelia, but also determined to destroy her ordered life.
During a short visit to her mother back in Germany, in which Ines spends
most of her time communicating by cellphone, Winfried leaves the birthday party
early, returning to his beloved dog Willi, an aging friend who, soon after,
dies. The beautiful scene in which the deaf dog cannot even be encouraged to
return into the house, and in which Winfried sleeps outside with his lifetime
friend, demonstrates something about love and commitment that his daughter will
never quite comprehend.
Trickster, fool that he is, Winfried suddenly shows up in Bucharest,
patiently waiting for his daughter in the lobby of her sleek office building
for hours before she finally shows up, almost refusing to recognize him as he
appears, monster-like gag teeth in place, on her periphery as she attempts to
steer an entire corporation board to her office whom she is attempting to
convince to allow her company to make a deal to restructure and outsource most
of its employees.
Monster that Ines is, she nonetheless, has spotted her father and
immediately dispenses her secretary to find him a hotel room and get him out of
her way. Even then, she does not entirely succeed, and, somewhat explicably,
invites him along to a party that evening at the British Embassy, where we hear
the remnants of a speech about how the West intends to convert the leftover
former Communist acolyte into a modernist industrialist paradise. If Ines
simply sees the same task as part of her job and duty, the wiser Winfried sees
it for what it is, and also, soon after, begins to see the destruction of his
daughter’s well-being in the process.
If, superficially, Ines seems in control
of nearly all situations, she, in fact, is extremely vulnerable on several
fronts. Not only has she been kept on as a mere consultant, trapped in the
outpost of Bucharest, but she faces sexist attitudes at all levels, and is expected
even to keep the Romanian contingent at bay by continuing an affair with her
“team” member Tim (Trystan Pütter). Moreover, despite her important negotiating
role, she is also expected to take the would-be client’s wife, Tatjana (Hadewych
Minis) on a shopping trip, even though she herself seldom “shops,” wearing a
uniform of white blouses and black pants and waist-coats.
To add to her distress, she describes her own role to the executive’s
possible competitors as “outsourcing”—a dangerous word in the market-sensitive
environment; and her father, joking that he has purchased an alternative
daughter, gaining some sympathy with her would-be client Henneberg (Michael
Wittenborn). For Ines, things are clearly not going well.
When she finally completely dismisses
her father, after having herself overslept an appointment with Henneberg, he
apparently sloughs off to the airport, presumably to never be seen again.
But then, of course, Winfried is a fool,
and returns, at a party she is having with her few women friends, as a new
being with a ridiculous wig and trick teeth, a “stranger,” Toni Erdmann, a man
who seems to various contradictory beings. For her friends, he is a consultant,
a coach. For others he becomes the German Ambassador. For still others he is a
close acquaintance of Henneberg and, even more dangerously, a friend of the
company executive which Henneberg represents, Ileiscu (Vlad Ivanov).
Strangely, no matter how perverse his looks and obvious lies, he seems
to make friends of everyone who Ines rubs wrong. Although many of this film’s
scenes are set in the wealthy enclaves of contemporary Romania, a trip to Iliescu’s
actual oil fields, reveals just how devastated is both the land and the
workers. But even here, the absurd Erdmann makes friends, despite getting one
man fired with a joke. When he has to urinate, however, another worker gently
leads him to his poor home, where he makes another friendship that demonstrates
us just how aloof his daughter has been from all living beings.
Attending a party to which he has been invited by a woman Erdmann has
met at one of his evenings out, he demands his daughter sing, to his piano
accompaniment, Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All,” a celebratory song for the guests. Ines, who obviously has
sung the song as a child in his own household, sings with great aplomb—if not
in perfect key. The performance reminds me a bit of the father and son duo in
the Dardenne Brothers’ La Promesse,
where the singing is a true horror, but so beautiful that you want to cry. I
did cry.
Even though he leaves soon after, Ines follows, observing that, once again, his very presence draws people, particularly children, to him. And in further evidence of her breakdown, hugs him close to her, finally accepting his ridiculousness.
Many critics describe this film as a “comedy,” but even the director could not quite comprehend what they meant. “It isn't a comedy – I'm not really sure why people think it is."
I’d argue that if you can comprehend A
Streetcar Named Desire or Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as strange comic works (Williams is rumored to
have laughed throughout his play’s premier performance, mostly at the
exaggerations of his character Stella and Stanley’s proclamations), you might
be able to see Toni Erdmann through
the same lens.
All of these are odd kinds of comedies, exaggerated views of family life
that reveal the absurdities of that institution. But maybe we’re safer simply
describing this nearly 3-hour film as a fascinating investigation into what it
really means to live a life with laughter and joy. Winfried/Erdmann is, indeed,
often quite humorous, but he is also a desperate man trying to redeem his
seriously lost daughter. Both he and his daughter represent extremes, and he
has little choice but to play out his absurd visions against his daughter’s own
lost sense of humor about living. I’m not sure Ines can ever truly regain her
sense of balance, but, at least, by film’s end, she momentarily takes up the
costume and tries becoming a momentary clown.
Los Angeles, April 19, 2017
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2017).
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