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,
it was also very centered on skits
with clowns. I saw Emmett Kelly in the circus in the 1950s in Cedar Rapids,
Iowa, and never forgot him, nor the numerous other silly beings who stuffed
themselves into the little spaces of automobiles and other impossible
containments. These beings were at the heart of the circus as much as the large
parades of pachyderms and other bestial beings. James Stewart, if you recall,
played just such a figure in the movie The
Greatest Show on Earth.
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.
Ines Conradi’s (Sandra Hüller) father, in Maren Ade’s significant film
of 2016, is a leftover clown named Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek), whose
corny shenanigans, although tolerated by family members, are now very much out
of favor. Clearly his clowning, his silly make-up and costumes that he has, for
years, used to help entertain his music students, has cost him his marriage and
the love of his very serious businesswoman daughter, working as a consultant
for a consulting firm in, of all places, Bucharest, in contemporary Romania.
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.
Ines runs away in terror, realizing that she has committed to hold a
party in her own apartment to “reunite” the Romanians with the German-American “team.”
In what only can be described as a kind of mental breakdown, Ines, unable,
given
the tightness of new dress, to even
put on her unmatched shoes, strips off everything, appearing at the door naked
to tell her guests, one by one, that the party is to be a naked one: if they do
not want to strip, they simply must leave. The first several guests turn away,
disgusted. But some arrive nude, after they have been telephoned about the new
requirements, and others return, all quite embarrassed about the circumstances.
Soon, all have, at least, put on simple garments, even Ines finally appearing in
a bathrobe. One guest, however, dressed fully in a Bulgarian kukeri costume,
looking like a large furry bear who, if petted, is seen as a sign of good luck,
arrives—obviously Ines’ trickster father, playing one last awful joke.
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.
The final scene, where Ines arrives for Winfried’s mother’s death, hints
at major changes in her life. She has left her for company and gone to work for
another company in Singapore. And in a beautiful kind of semi-reconciliation,
she puts on his terrible teeth and wears one of her grandmother’s ridiculous
hats, looking for a moment as silly as her father has throughout. Winfried runs
to get the camera, but the moment is lost, as Ines takes out the teeth and
tosses the hat away; the gesture is everything. Finally, she has recognized the
importance of his “foolishness.”
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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