Illustrations by Lola Fleming and Ciarán Butler.
Connor Howlett (Film Editor)
The idea behind this Film Club is to pick a film that I think deserves more attention, and set my deputies and another TN2er the homework of watching it. They’ll then share their viewing experiences alongside mine. Ideally, we’ll all love my exquisite taste for cinema, and you’ll have four people recommending a film to you instead of just one. Or maybe you’ll never trust one of my reviews again.
My pick for the second edition of TN2’s film club is a film I wouldn’t dare to assign my editors during term time due to its rather momentous 156-minute running time. That said, perhaps my more mischievous alter-ego—Runeuck Bubleof—would, just to make some heckmeck, Toni Erdmann-style. It was also 2017’s nomination for Germany in the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016) is about an incessant joker, Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek), who, prompted by the death of his beloved dog, makes an impromptu visit to Bucharest to visit his daughter, Ines (Sandra Hüller), and check up on her. He is concerned by what he sees: a culture of subtle sexist humiliation epitomised by her boss, (Michael Wittenborn) who asks her to help his wife go shopping (Ines is a business consultant advising on outsourcing for the CEO’s oil company, not a personal shopper). Adding to this with what Richard Brody refers to in the New Yorker as the “inhuman indifference” of the European workplace that is clearly making her profoundly unhappy, Winfried leaves Bucharest unsettled. Later that night, Ines is in a bar with some friends and tells them how she has just had the worst weekend of her life, mostly due to her father’s unannounced presence. If the film were a pantomime, the audience would be yelling at her by now, because behind her is a man in a scruffy wig wearing some large, wonky fake teeth. Naturally it’s her father, who has immediately returned to Bucharest in ‘disguise’ as the character of Toni Erdmann He continues to pop up in the background of Ines’ professional events, mischievously justifying his presence by announcing that he is either Henneberg’s life coach or the German ambassador to Romania.
This is a film so strange and alluring in the unpredictable madness of its plot and portrayal of character that shortly after the Oscars, it was announced that Jack Nicholson would be coming out of retirement to star in the American remake. The sharpness of the dialogue along with the deadpan bluntness of the performances are superbly judged, consistently juxtaposing the often-cruel animosity of the corporate business world with our innate desire for meaningful human connection. This is epitomised in a scene at an elevator as Winfried and Ines are about to part ways, so hug and say their goodbyes. They then have to wait for it to arrive. The scene is played out in its entirety at an extremely uncomfortable pace, drawing attention to the absurdity of human behaviour in awkward situations.
Toni Erdmann does test the patience of its audience at times, and it is too long a film for a pristinely sustained viewing experience. Yet, this pacing reflects the malaise of its characters and shows that their lives are lacking. Winfried’s life is fatigued by his unrelenting playfulness and the consequences of this on others, as we see when he gets a construction worker fired as a result of a joke he was trying to make with the man. There is, after all, a detachment in the father-daughter relationship for a reason. In contrast, Ines’ personal life is so ruled by the system of corporate culture that her interpersonal relations have no space to breathe; her relationships wilt from neglect and are thus unable to bear fruit.
Toni doesn’t resolve Ines’ problems—in some situations, he exacerbates them. He does, however, throw a spanner in the works and gets her to question the environment she feels trapped in. Toni doesn’t open the door, but he points out the exit sign. Whilst not for everyone, I think Toni Erdmann is worth the watch for its critique of contemporary corporate ennui; it is funny, sensitive and moving from start to finish. Or perhaps that’s just Runeuck’s German sense of humour.
Savvy Hanna (Deputy Film Editor)
While Toni Erdmann is centred around the outrageous practical jokes played on Ines by her father Winfried, I would not describe the film as a comedy. Although the plot—a man trying to reconnect with his hard-working daughter by wearing a disguise and showing up at all of her professional events—sounds like it would perfectly suit a 87-minute Hollywood comedy blockbuster, Toni Erdmann completely rejects the typical comedy film formula. The film is almost three hours long with an incredibly slow pace, and the comedic scenes are played straight, allowing for a dissection of human behaviour rather than pulling for the most audience laughs.
Don’t get me wrong, the film is funny. Many of the absurd situations that Winfried forces his daughter into while disguised as his alter-ego Toni Erdmann are entertaining and deserve laughs from the audience. But once the laughter has ended, all of the scenes continue on just long enough for the audience to realise the awkward, and sometimes upsetting, nature of the situation that they just moments ago viewed as comedic.
Some incidents don’t even allow for laughter before the uncomfortable realism of the characters’ reactions hit. I’m sure that a character stubbing their toe, accidentally getting blood on their shirt while relieving the pressure from their injury, and needing to quickly switch shirts with their assistant before a huge work presentation, would typically have a laugh-track under it in a sitcom, but the film’s pacing and Sandra Hüller’s performance make that series of events in the film upsetting and painful to watch, especially within the context of how unhappy Ines appears to be with her work and personal life.
Because of all this, Toni Erdmann is not an easy watch. The film’s relentlessly slow pace demands your attention, while the long runtime meant it took my attention-deficit brain three days to finish the film. There is rarely relief from the distressing nature of Ines’ life, from dealing with sexist humiliation at work to the embarrassment of her father’s pranks. But in the moments when Ines and Winfried do find a connection, the stress of watching an almost three-hour-long German tragicomedy film is finally worth it.
James McCleary (Deputy Film Editor)
I’m still not entirely sure how to define Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016). To say that it feels like several different films fused into one congealed product would be to put it lightly; within its first hour, the film rotates between a heartwarming family drama, an operatic web of corporate intrigue and a staggeringly dark absurdist comedy, all without missing a beat. It is, if nothing else, a demanding watch for its viewers, necessitating their willingness to disappear entirely into the madness and trust that, at the end of its 156 minute runtime, there will ultimately be a point.
To its credit, Erdmann’s use of the three act structure is impeccable; the events are divided into three roughly hourlong phases, each of which tells a different kind of emotional story beneath its tonally sporadic skin. The performances from Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller as father and daughter Winfried and Ines respectively are essential to this, with both performers gamely embodying their characters with enough conflicting nuance to justify the tonal shifts. Winfried’s pranks are wholesome and sweet, but can be traced back to a place of selfish amusement in his gleeful facial tics. Meanhile Ines is never once entirely stubborn nor vulnerable, rather she is perpetually trapped somewhere between the two and continuously succumbs to the weaknesses generated by both. Though the film’s narrative is long, winding and convoluted , the relentless efforts of these two flawlessly crafted figures to test one another are as morbidly fascinating as they are frequently hysterical.
Despite the levity provided by its cast, the process of watching Erdmann is pretty exhausting. The precise dialogue and coldly paced scenes are as demanding as they are slow, and it does appear for the longest time that the film’s aspirations beyond the comedy are simple and, to be frank, a bit twee. I was relieved, then, to discover in the film’s third, and by far best act, that Ade’s vision was in fact a far more complicated and crushing invention. In premise alone, Erdmann is not dissimilar to the thousands of family suburb comedies spawned by Hollywood, but its power over these films rests in this incredibly daring ending, which I am reluctant to spoil but feel obliged to say left me not too far from utter devastation. Where most films of this genre would seek to ask for forgiveness, Erdmann cuts far deeper by asking “are you better off?”
Toni Erdmann is certainly not a film for everyone; indeed, there were numerous points in its epic length where I felt irreparably disconnected from the material, but if you are willing to dedicate yourself to it for as long as it takes for Ade, Simonischek and Hüller to cast their spell, the sense of reward is truly staggering.
Gillian Doyle (Deputy TV Editor)
MUBI classifies Toni Erdmann as a “Drama, Comedy”, but is it? It’s nearly three hours long and the dog dies, and that’s just for a start. Classic comedy staples such as drug use and impromptu singing in front of strangers are devoid of humour, the former lacking the expected wacky results and the latter any moment of reflection. It soon becomes clear that a different classification would appear appropriate – “Comedy within a Drama”, perhaps, or “Drama concerned with Comedy”. Winfried acts as though he were in a comedy, but nobody else does.
My favourite part of the film was the ending, which isn’t the criticism that it sounds. Instead of ending immediately after Ines and her father are able to smile at their relative’s funeral, which would have been an easy summary of Winifried’s message, the film continues just a few minutes more to show Ines breaking the whimsical mood and reflecting once her father is gone. She will soon be leaving the job that made her so upset, but she’s moving to Shanghai for another consulting job. She’ll be achieving the goal she set for herself before her father intervened, just not with the same company. It feels overly optimistic to think that this new company won’t have a similarly soul-crushing workplace environment with similar morals, considering that her experience is in consulting for oil companies. This ending makes you want to watch it again, to consider how powerful Winifried truly is. It’s unclear at best if his advice will work for her. Has it actually worked for him? his daughter asks of him , though we ignore it because she’s measuring success using money and status. But by more wholesome metrics, he doesn’t seem to be doing well either. His relationship with his daughter is clearly unsatisfactory, and his ex-wife hasn’t told him that they decided to celebrate her birthday early, leaving him to arrive empty-handed. She only laughs at his jokes when they are alone, which is better than his mother, who never does. We don’t see him interacting with any adults at his workplace, something the film certainly has time to show us. Ade takes the film’s simple premise of someone lost in their work finding joy again and complicates it, leaving us with a difficult but rewarding viewing experience.
Toni Erdmann is available to stream on the MUBI Library.
