You have to be incredibly relaxed to use a cheese grater right.

Toni Erdmann

(2016)

(SPOILERS) It’s easy to see why Maren Ade’s rambling, rumpled – it rather resembles its protagonist in form – tragi-comedy was instantly snapped up by Hollywood (or more especially by Jack Nicholson, promising to come out of retirement for a golden role; we shall see…), as, with a few minor tweaks and a directive to over- rather than underplay, it bears all the hallmarks of a classic uplifting Hollywood narrative. I’m not sure I buy into its miraculous hype, however (including a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination and Sight & Sound’s best film of 2016). The performances in Toni Erdmann are top notch, the scenarios often funny, sad, excruciating, but it’s also content to meander and overly devotes itself to the idea that vérité equates to depth.

The S&S synopsis summarised the picture thus: “A shambling baby boomer pushes his high-achieving daughter’s buttons with a series of increasingly bizarre practical jokes”. Which makes it sound like it would have been ideal for Robin Williams. But suggesting Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek) is so calculated is to falsely present the picture. His guise as Toni Erdmann is as improvised and unstructured as Ade’s directorial style, and his jokes often come nowhere near to paying off – commonly amounting to little more than his ever-ready upper dentures, a brunette wig and announcing himself as variously a life coach or the German Ambassador to Romania. Indeed, Ade resists so consistently the opportunity for a cathartic comic set piece (Winfried puts the corporate machine in its place! Winfried humiliates the priapic boyfriend!) that you can practically see the Tinseltown hacks salivating at the potential.

That’s because the essential arc is that of your classic big screen comedy; free-spirited parent imposes himself on his uptight, emotionally-sterile daughter’s life with hilarious and meaningful results. Add in the disguise aspect, albeit not even remotely fooling anyone who knows – the most mirthful results come at the outset, when Winfried poses as his twin brother for the postie, speaking enthusiastically about the mail bomb he’s just received and can’t wait to defuse – and you have potential for schmaltz-heavy sentiment and Mrs Doubtfire hijinks.

Toni Erdmann doesn’t play that way, and resists the easy fix/resolution. Winfried is no paragon of virtue; in many respects, he’s just as lost as his daughter, only with a less overtly debilitating approach to how he deals with it. But still, his wife left him for reasons that don’t need spelling out, his best friend is his on-his-last-legs dog, and with an approach of always being “on”, it isn’t hard to see why even moderate and well-rounded offspring would have reservations about spending swathes of time with him.

Ines Conradi (Sandra Huller) is a consultant advising the oil industry on downsizing, so a combination of turn-offs right there. She entirely goes with the get-ahead flow, soullessly giving her assistant (who hangs on her every instruction, and even found Ines’ apartment for her) performance tips. And as much as she may know her job, her iciness inevitably backfires when trying to impress, particularly with her father hanging on. He’s already told the CEO (Michael Wittenborn) she’s attempting to get on board that he has hired a substitute daughter (later, when Ines attempts to ditch dad for drinks with the CEO, the latter scolds her attitude). She feigns concern for Winfred being ditched while she spends hours shopping with the CEO’s wife (“Are you really a human?” he responds) and proceeds to scornfully dismiss the loss of his beloved pet to friends (only to find her father sitting at the bar next to her).

But something of him begins to work its way into her psyche. “Toni” has struck a chord, such that, even though she can accuse her father of being as lacking in perspective as she (“Do you have plans in life, other than slipping far cushions under people”: “I don’t have a fart cushion”), she can’t help laughing a few scenes later when her father, on a bench, interrupts her boss with an explosive outburst (“Did he just fart?”)

Ines slow breakdown manifests in increasingly bewildering/humorous fashion (and from the first, we can see she’s her father’s daughter, matching him for cutting ripostes – “Great. She can call you on your birthday so I don’t have to” is her reaction to “news” of his substitute daughter), instructing her colleague/lover to ejaculate on a petit-four (which she proceeds to consume) and her outpouring of emotion in song – under pressure from Toni, for whom she is posing as his assistant – in a manner she cannot otherwise express.

The slowly poisonous consequences of a job in which she is causing others misery and destitution hits home when Toni takes issue with the sacking of an employee as a result of a joke remark he made. She dismisses his “green” attitude and conciliatory gestures (“I can’t believe you told them not to lose their humour”), leading to her alarming/hilarious meltdown decision to turned her birthday into a “naked party”. At which Winfried also appears, dressed as a Bulgarian kukeri (I assumed it was a yeti) leading to her heartfelt hugging of her hirsute father.

It’s appropriate that there’s no upbeat resolution to Toni Erdmann, though. Ines hasn’t left her job; rather, she’s sidestepped from Bucharest to Singapore. Toni may have reconnected with her, but his world is one of increasing isolation (his dog and then his mother die), and he finds himself contemplating how the precious moments can only be perceived with hindsight. His life, and ours, are “so often about getting things done”. So yeah, put a positive spin on that, and it could be a goldmine. Let’s face it, there isn’t much depth to its critique of globalisation (it hurts people, and you most of all when you go along with it), so that could probably stay as is. And when Jack drops out, perhaps find someone who more approximates Simmonischek’s bearish gait – Ron Perlman springs to mind. Also, honing the material a touch would do no harm either.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

If this is not a place for a priest, Miles, then this is exactly where the Lord wants me.

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
(SPOILERS) Sometimes a movie comes along where you instantly know you’re safe in the hands of a master of the craft, someone who knows exactly the story they want to tell and precisely how to achieve it. All you have to do is sit back and exult in the joyful dexterity on display. Bad Times at the El Royale is such a movie, and Drew Goddard has outdone himself. From the first scene, set ten years prior to the main action, he has constructed a dizzyingly deft piece of work, stuffed with indelible characters portrayed by perfectly chosen performers, delirious twists and game-changing flashbacks, the package sealed by an accompanying frequently diegetic soundtrack, playing in as it does to the essential plot beats of the whole. If there's a better movie this year, it will be a pretty damn good one.

I am so sick of Scotland!

Outlaw/King (2018)
(SPOILERS) Proof that it isn't enough just to want to make a historical epic, you have to have some level of vision for it as well. Say what you like about Mel's Braveheart – and it isn't a very good film – it's got sensibility in spades. He knew what he was setting out to achieve, and the audience duly responded. What does David Mackenzie want from Outlaw/King (it's shown with a forward slash on the titles, so I'm going with it)? Ostensibly, and unsurprisingly, to restore the stature of Robert the Bruce after it was rather tarnished by Braveheart, but he has singularly failed to do so. More than that, it isn’t an "idea", something you can recognise or get behind even if you don’t care about the guy. You’ll never forget Mel's Wallace, for better or worse, but the most singular aspect of Chris Pine's Bruce hasn’t been his rousing speeches or heroic valour. No, it's been his kingly winky.

There's something wrong with the sky.

Hold the Dark (2018)
(SPOILERS) Hold the Dark, an adaptation of William Giraldi's 2014 novel, is big on atmosphere, as you'd expect from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room) and actor-now-director (I Don’t Want to Live in This World Anymore) pal Macon Blair (furnishing the screenplay and appearing in one scene), but contrastingly low on satisfying resolutions. Being wilfully oblique can be a winner if you’re entirely sure what you're trying to achieve, but the effect here is rather that it’s "for the sake of it" than purposeful.

It is the greatest movie never released, you know.

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018)
(SPOILERS) They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, Morgan Neville's documentary on the making of Orson Welles' long-gestating The Other Side of the Wind, is much more interesting than the finally finished article itself, but to be fair to Welles, he foresaw as much as a possibility. Welles' semi-improvised faux-doc approach may not seem nearly as innovative nearly fifty years on – indeed, in the intervening period there's a slew of baggage of boundary-blurring works, mockumentaries and the whole found footage genre – but he was striving for something different, even if that "different" was a reaction to the hole he'd dug himself in terms of bankability. On the evidence of the completed film, he never quite found the necessary rhythm or mode, but the struggle to achieve it, as told here, is fascinating.

You kind of look like a slutty Ebola virus.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
(SPOILERS) The phenomenal success of Crazy Rich Asians – in the US at any rate, thus far – might lead one to think it's some kind of startling original, but the truth is, whatever its core demographic appeal, this adaptation of Kevin Kwan's novel taps into universally accepted romantic comedy DNA and readily recognisable tropes of family and class, regardless of cultural background. It emerges a smoothly professional product, ticking the expected boxes in those areas – the heroine's highs, lows, rejections, proposals, accompanied by whacky scene-stealing best friend – even if the writing is sometimes a little on the clunky side.

Have you ever looked into a goat's eyes?

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
(SPOILERS) There was probably an insightful, sensitive movie to be made about the World War II experiences of conscientious objector Desmond Doss, but Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge isn’t it. It’s unsurprising that a number of reviewers have independently indulged the wordplay Hackneyed Ridge, an effective summation of the ridiculously over-the-top, emotionally shameless theatrics Mel indulges, turning a story that already fell into the “You wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t true” camp into “You won’t believe it anyway, because it’s been turned up to 11” (and that’s with Gibson omitting incidents he perceived to be “too much”, such as Doss being shot by a sniper after he was wounded, having given up his stretcher to another wounded man; certainly, as wrung through Mel’s tonal wringer, that would have been the case).

Perhaps Mel should stick to making subtitled features, the language barrier diluting the excruciating lack of nuance or subtlety in his treatment of subject m…

Never compare me to the mayor in Jaws! Never!

Ghostbusters (2016)
(SPOILERS) Paul Feig is a better director than Ivan Reitman, or at very least he’s savvy enough to gather technicians around him who make his films look good, but that hasn’t helped make his Ghostbusters remake (or reboot) a better movie than the original, and that’s even with the original not even being that great a movie in the first place.

Along which lines, I’d lay no claims to the 1984 movie being some kind of auteurist gem, but it does make some capital from the polarising forces of Aykroyd’s ultra-geekiness on the subject of spooks and Murray’s “I’m just here for the asides” irreverence. In contrast, Feig’s picture is all about treating the subject as he does any other genre, be it cop, or spy, or romcom. There’s no great affection, merely a reliably professional approach, one minded to ensure that a generous quota of gags (on-topic not required) can be pumped out via abundant improv sessions.

So there’s nothing terribly wrong with Ghostbusters, but aside from …

What if I tell you to un-punch someone, what you do then?

Incredibles 2 (2018)
(SPOILERS) Incredibles 2 may not be as fresh as the first outing – indeed, certain elements of its plotting border on the retread – but it's equally, if not more, inventive as a piece of animation, and proof that, whatever his shortcomings may be philosophically, Brad Bird is a consummately talented director. This is a movie that is consistently very funny, and which is as thrilling as your average MCU affair, but like Finding Dory, you may understandably end up wondering if it shouldn't have revolved around something a little more substantial to justify that fifteen-year gap in reaching the screen.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog