Toni Erd­mann

Though it might be hard to imag­ine, there exists such a thing as film crit­ic grunt work. It’s the equiv­a­lent of clear­ing out the mess hall or hos­ing down the latrines. One of these menial but nec­es­sary tasks involves reit­er­at­ing why the late Japan­ese direc­tor, Yasu­jiro Ozu, is one of the all-time grand mas­ters of cin­e­ma. His 1951 film, Tokyo Sto­ry, often scrapes the heady peaks of the increas­ing­ly-reg­u­lar ​‘best movie ever’ polls. But there remains a con­tin­gent who don’t quite see the appeal of the director’s del­i­cate, delib­er­ate and minor-key domes­tic comedies.

Grab­bing for the pithy but reduc­tive response, Ozu is one of a very small hand­ful of film­mak­ers who tru­ly com­pre­hends the fraught emo­tion­al bonds between par­ents and their chil­dren. More specif­i­cal­ly, how these bonds begin to fray and des­ic­cate with time. He is able to look at the dynam­ics of a rela­tion­ship from both direc­tions – from youth up to adult­hood and vice ver­sa. And he doesn’t just under­stand these bonds, he knows how to artic­u­late them, to visu­alise them, to drama­tise them, to make them appear like the truth.

On the evi­dence of her third fea­ture, Toni Erd­mann, the Ger­man film­mak­er Maren Ade now clinks saki cups with that select coterie of prodi­gious­ly gift­ed screen human­ists. Her film tells of per­pet­u­al­ly corps­ing father/​career prac­ti­cal jok­er, Win­fried Con­ra­di (Peter Simonis­chek), and his straight-laced daugh­ter Ines (San­dra Hüller).

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His attempts to bridge a gap that has formed between them are futile. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of future rec­on­cil­i­a­tion appears dim. And so, like some unwieldy, mav­er­ick psy­cho­an­a­lyst, he decides to assist the apple of his eye in a search for lost time. He phys­i­cal­ly delves into her sub­con­scious, crafti­ly chip­ping away at lay­ers of accrued mem­o­ry. Toni Erd­mann is the sto­ry of what it takes to remem­ber, and what it takes to want to remem­ber. It is the most epic and pro­found of all journeys.

The title of the film is heart­break­ing in and of itself. With­out giv­ing too much away, you could also call this film Rose­bud and it would have a sim­i­lar, head­i­ly nos­tal­gic effect. It’s the code­word to a secret life or a pri­vate joke. You can image it being the name of a daffy local char­ac­ter that Win­fried would joke about when walk­ing through the local park with a knee-high Ines. Or per­haps it was just a ran­dom alter-ego invent­ed as a way for a father to cheer up his daugh­ter whose shark-like deter­mi­na­tion meant she had no time or incli­na­tion to make friends.

Either way, the utter­ly dev­as­tat­ing com­po­nent to this film is that we know the events we are see­ing have hap­pened before in the past. There is a seem­ing­ly throw-away sequence involv­ing a design­er cheese grater that, in the con­text of the cen­tral rela­tion­ship, is loaded with hid­den mes­sages and mean­ings. This film is an attempt to recre­ate a more inno­cent moment in time, when unal­loyed hap­pi­ness exist­ed. Like when Charles Fos­ter Kane dived about in the thick snow drifts with his trusty sled.

Ade’s excel­lent debut fea­ture, The For­est for the Trees, arrived in 2003. Filmed on ugly, abra­sive dig­i­tal video and set in the com­i­cal­ly unin­spir­ing climes of Baden-Württemberg, Ger­many, this mer­ci­less char­ac­ter study bull­dozes the dreams of a young, new­ly inde­pen­dent school teacher who is utter­ly unaware of her extreme social awk­ward­ness. In many ways its hero­ine, Melanie Pröschle (played by Eva Löbau), could be seen as a fore­run­ner to Toni Erdmann’s Ines – both are dri­ven women will­ing to sev­er fam­i­ly ties in the name of pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess. Where Melanie spec­tac­u­lar­ly dis­in­te­grates at the point of fly­ing the coop, Ines, with all her mox­ie and con­fi­dence, busts through and, for bet­ter and worse, lays the foun­da­tions of that cov­et­ed sec­ond life.

Some might see this film as the sto­ry of a bored, self­ish father swad­dling his daugh­ter for idle plea­sure. Or, maybe it’s a study of how a daugh­ter is some­how ​“cured” of her tough-nosed ambi­tion by being forcibly regressed to the inno­cence of child­hood. Maybe you could say that the film is against women in the work­place, espe­cial­ly those who might back-burn their fem­i­nin­i­ty for the pur­pos­es of ascend­ing the cor­po­rate lad­der. Yet it is all and none of these things.

Watch­ing Toni Erd­mann is like wit­ness­ing a deft bal­anc­ing act, where every nuance is cal­cu­lat­ed and weighed with immac­u­late pre­ci­sion. Ade sup­press­es par­ti­san pol­i­tics, or any­thing that might be con­strued as the search of a more right­eous cause. It’s not about Win­fried, and it’s not about Ines – it’s about the unten­able emo­tions that con­nect them as people.

It’s a film that feels like every frame has been minute­ly cal­i­brat­ed for effect. And at the same time, it’s sprawl­ing and free and open to the idea that these types of rela­tion­ship are some­times incom­pre­hen­si­bly elab­o­rate. Scenes spin out and spin off. Yet the cast remain acute­ly aware of Ade’s mis­sion. Hüller, an actor who made waves way back in 2006 as the star of the har­row­ing pos­ses­sion dra­ma, Requiem, deliv­ers a per­for­mance that’s com­pa­ra­ble in its hyper-focus and thrilling inten­si­ty to Gena Row­lands when she’s work­ing with John Cassavetes.

The stun­ning Simonis­chek, too, chan­nels a com­e­dy that just comes from being as nor­mal as pos­si­ble. The tech­nique is evi­dent, but you can see that they are com­plete­ly lost with­in their char­ac­ters. This is per­ti­nent, as the film is about peo­ple los­ing them­selves with­in false iden­ti­ties, reach­ing a point where they for­get who they once were.

The sto­ry sees Win­fried spring­ing a sur­prise vis­it on his unsus­pect­ing daugh­ter who works for a man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy in Bucharest, Roma­nia. The steady, ner­vous­ly relaxed set-up offers a painful­ly accu­rate take on the awk­ward, duti­ful fam­i­ly vis­it. Win­fried just wants to bask in the glow of his suc­cess­ful daugh­ter. She, on the oth­er hand, has to suc­cumb to rit­u­al humil­i­a­tion in the name of robust busi­ness prac­tice. She has no time to indulge her prank-hap­py papa as he fes­toons her with gifts and attempts to insti­gate life-affirm­ing con­ver­sa­tions. Then, just when she thinks she’s in the clear and able once more to focus on the job at hand, a Dick­en­sian ghost from the past returns to haunt her.

Toni Erd­mann is a film in praise of the human fac­tor. Ade loves peo­ple, and she also loves love. She shows how dif­fi­cult it is to shed your skin, to stop per­form­ing and return to a nat­ur­al state of being. Busi­ness pre­sen­ta­tions are pre­ced­ed with detailed strate­gic pow-wows that attempt to sec­ond-guess the psy­chol­o­gy of oth­ers in the room. Ines has to make snap deci­sions when it comes to how she’ll act in the com­pa­ny of her father, what she’ll reveal, how she’ll manip­u­late him, if she needs to. Lit­tle does she know, he’s doing exact­ly the same to her.

Ines becomes an emo­tion­al exten­sion of her job – dis­tant and numb to the real­i­ties of her actions. Ade doesn’t present the com­pa­ny Ines works for as a fortress of cor­po­rate evil, but she does sug­gest that this type of work can have a dam­ag­ing effect on those involved in car­ry­ing out prac­tices that ruin lives. It is a banal sort of evil that seeps, unno­ticed, through the dank air and into your bloodstream.

What’s also mirac­u­lous about this film is that it takes Hol­ly­wood over its knee and gives it a sound but instruc­tive whup­ping. Guys, the whole haul­ing in fourth-rate stand-up comics who are more than will­ing to abase them­selves for low coin, plac­ing them in front of the cam­era and just let­ting the improv mag­ic hap­pen is not work­ing. It’s lazy and an affront to a pay­ing audi­ence. Ade builds jokes, she doesn’t just throw a bunch of ran­dom shit against a shiny sur­face in the hope that some­thing sticks.

And yet, there’s a dis­tinct fond­ness for and over­lap with main­stream Hol­ly­wood com­e­dy. Ade toys with the idea of dra­mat­ic sign­post­ing, drop­ping in a sug­ges­tion which caus­es the synaps­es to guess what will hap­pen lat­er on. She under­cuts those pre­dic­tions in a vari­ety of sur­pris­ing ways, but also makes us remem­ber how invest­ed we are in these people.

Loop­ing back to the begin­ning, let’s talk about Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry once more. It is a melan­choly film in which two par­ents grudg­ing­ly accept that they are no longer inte­gral to the busy lives of their chil­dren, and so drift into noth­ing­ness. Here, Win­fried is made to con­sid­er his own mor­tal­i­ty when his mutt, Willy, shuf­fles into the bush­es and keels over. The dif­fer­ence is, he ral­lies against the abyss. Maybe Toni Erd­mann is an absurd mod­ern rejoin­der to Ozu, express­ing the lengths need­ed to rebuild a par­ent-child con­nec­tion that has dimin­ished over the years. It’s incred­i­bly sad to think back to the per­son you once were. And you can do it, but only if you’re will­ing to smile in the process.