As Faces de Toni Erdmann

We all know how a typical family drama runs. A broken relationship falls into some situation that forced the characters to face the issue, the tension grows to the breaking point, they get to learn something, and in the end it resolved them into a new found love and bond (in case of a comedy) or leaves them totally disillusioned and break away from each other (in case of a tragedy). Americans have championed this genre and set the rules we all know, whether we love it or hate it. But here comes a strange rule breaker from Germany, and it beats them all because it stays, despite of all its absurd and quirky situations, totally realistic at its core.

The most prominent emotion through out the film is awkwardness. And no, it's not just because the father doing all sorts of crazy things in his alter-ego, Toni Erdmann. The awkwardness and absurdity dominate everywhere, whether it is a family gathering in Germany or a business meeting in Bucharest. It's essentially because people are all disconnected. It's not that they hate each other or have any ill intentions, but everybody's too afraid to offend anybody, tries too hard to keep the nice facade and fails to share what really matters - even between father and daughter.

The ingenuity of the film is how it treats these awkward moments. Most other films, especially when they brand themselves as a comedy, would try to release the tension with a punch line, a big laugh moment before moving onto the next. In Toni Erdmann, we're not given such easy short cut. We are forced to live through these awkward moments stretching out almost to real time and still not given the luxury of releasing the tension. It might be frustrating for some, but one must admit that is much more akin to real life. Who hasn't experienced a discord with family, partner, friends or colleagues, which keeps you sleepless all night and run into awkward reunion with the person stretching into the following morning? There's no such a thing as an easy solution and relief. Where the father and daughter give a little recital is a high moment of mockery to expectations for such. The choice of song is 'The Greatest Love of All', that is riddled with all the unicorn coloured words like 'children', 'love' and 'dignity' that are 'easy to achieve'. The fact that both father and daughter easily pick it up even on a whim shows that the song represents their shared memory from the past. But despite of that and the optimistic song performed decently by Sandra Huller (considering it's a Whitney song, that is), which would have made the climax in any old American family drama, fails to create that magic moment of 'I love you, dad', 'I love you too, princess'.

But it's not all in vain. Because the father dares to break into his daughter's life, and because the daughter decides, however reluctantly, to go along with it, she learns that he really cares and he her life is much more than the gleaming shopping malls and black business suits. So when it finally comes to the moment, after time after time just seeing the other walking away from a distance in the course of this long awkward journey, when the daughter catches him up and falls into his arms, that short and still awkward hug between the naked daughter and the father in a giant furry costume, strikes your heart so much harder.

When they reunite at the grandma's funeral, nothing much is changed. The social gathering is as shallow as ever, and the father and daughter cut out still an awkward picture together. 'Toni Erdmann' is stubbornly refuses to give us an easy (thus unrealistic) satisfaction to the very last second of its looong journey. Yet, having joined their journey, we can tell they won't now at least blindly complain, 'Oh, he (she) knows nothing!'. And when the time comes when the daughter remembers her father in the future, it would be those few days she lived with Toni Erdmann that she is going to relive time after time.

The film is (partly) about the fact that the globalisation of production does not go hand in hand with the globalisation of (real) culture, and therefore people lose a part of their "humanness", and get a strange substitute for it, the so-called "corporate culture". This problem affects all of us and most of us must have encountered similar situations or feelings as the persons in the film, that is why imho it resonates with so many people. It is especially meaningful coming from a nation, which in the past produced the greatest artists and thinkers (and not only the dark years), and which by all its peculiar characteristics and abilities would be meant to oppose the above trend. Sorry if my English is a bit strange.

Germans don't have a reputation for being extremely funny. In cinema, they are better known for their dramas than for their comedies. 'Toni Erdmann' is the exception to the rule. It's a German comedy and - surprise! - it has funny moments.

On the other hand, this film is as much a drama as a comedy. The focus is not so much on the humor, but rather on the relationship between a father and his daughter. The daughter is a tense career woman, who lives in Bucharest and doesn't really seem to enjoy her life. When her father visits her, he tries to make her unwind a bit by performing crazy pranks and practical jokes. It's because of these jokes, sometimes leading to hilarious situations, that the film is classified as a comedy. But on the other hand, there is always a bitter aftertaste to the humour, because it is secondary to the father-daughter theme.

As irritating and embarrassing the father sometimes is to the daughter, at last he succeeds in changing her attitude. This in itself leads to some bizarre and also dramatically strong scenes.

In my opinion, the script could have used some streamlining and there was no need to stretch the movie to 162 minutes. On the plus side: this film offers an original view to the question how seriously we should take life. And the two lead actors do a great job.

This is a great movie - but most likely not for everyone. It's about academic upper middle-class people and their family relationships. Not everybody will find that interesting and there is no usual "romantic" plot development. It's a family portrait of a father and her daughter and as such has no (plot) conclusion. It is not the usual light comedy since it touches very serious questions and the prevailing mood is unhappiness (it is however _very_ funny at times ;-)).

That being said, this movie makes some very fine and subtle observations, presents them in a funny and entertaining form yet at the same time in a thought-provoking and philosophical way which will make you think about it for a long time. If you're from an academic (german) household you will find lots of similarities in your own family relations.

This movie is not fast-paced - in fact it often has long shots of lonely people and a lot is not said but has to be filled in by the viewer. So if you don't relate to the characters this movie will feel longish for sure. But if you find traces of your own life or that of your friends and relatives you'll be amazed by the subtlety and finesse in which this movie is directed. Although there are some bizarre events, everything which happens in this movie could happen in real life. There are no implausible scenes in this movie! This is an incredible statement given the crazy and bizarre things which happen in this movie. If you wanna know how that could be true, you might wanna watch it.

I liked this movie a lot. I met "these" people over the last 25 years in Bucharest and in Germany.

In this "new global world", the most of the time everybody is so deep into the details of "knowing how to be" because everybody is already like this, that if you take a step back and watch from a different angle you might wonder if anyone still remembers what it is to be a human. To remember the pleasure of feeling secure and loved by the ones that are guaranteed to be the ones that will do so. And finally if you get the right angle, you have to admit that everyone around you looks ridiculously, trying to find the detail in the detail that would make a difference, even if everybody does everything identically and there is obviously nothing else. The game about being a tough global business-woman/man, up to the most disgusting proofs to be the tougher one, is finally just flat and meaningless.

The whole story is wonderful true. The actors are doing a fantastic job making you feel the frustration and discomfort that should be seen and felt by everyone living in such a world. It is not a slow movie ... it is the shortest version of an never-ending slow life with nothing that would make your heart pound for the true meanings.

This movie brought two points to my mind. Einstein defined madness: - Trying the same thing again and again while expecting a different outcome. - Google was build on the simple idea that everybody is searching for something that everybody is already mentioning... Try to type "Apple" in the Google search field