Toni Erdmann

There's just something really magical about this film. I had heard so much praise bestowed upon it but had never really read anything about its premise or plot. I found it to be a very lovely, touching, and brilliant drama, although it also functions as a comedy in more ways than one. I think the real gift of the film is that it's able to be so touching and charming without actually trying to be overly cute and sentimental. The screenplay does so many things and takes so many turns for us to keep on going on this ride with the lead characters. Peter Simonischek and especially Sandra Huller are really fantastic and give us here one of the best pairings of 2016. This is a film to cherish and adore and I really hope it finds an audience. I'm sure it will and I can't wait to see it again.

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.

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

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.

But it is hard going. Ultimately I'm glad I stayed with it but it tests your patience to the limit at times. It's not a 1 rating like some reviewers are saying. But it's certainly not a 10 either. It's far too long to enable it to get anywhere that kind of rating. There seems to be so many meaningless scenes that could have been trimmed. There are certain moments that for me were laugh out loud. Ines played by Sandra Huller is fantastic. It's made me want to see more of her work. Talk of an Hollywood remake on here. I can only assume it will be a very very different film. There is no way ever a scene for scene remake would make it out of Hollywood. Give the original a go first, it's different!!