Editor's Note: If you "don't want to sleep" or "can't sleep," read on.
There may be a literary film here, and there may be a horror film here. I don't know if you'll fall asleep or if you'll be scared even more out of bed.
Tonight we introduce a highly acclaimed comedy film that lasts 162 minutes and doesn't feel long at all.
Tony Erdmann poster
German writer/director Maren Ade's third novel, Toni Erdmann, has been acclaimed since its debut at Cannes last year, and its name has been repeatedly featured in the 2016 film of the year list.
The length of the 162-minute epic is extremely slow. Many times, the viewer needs to stare at the slightly shaking freeze-frame shot, waiting for an old man who calls himself "Tony Erdman" with a long black wig and braces to enter the frame. His unexpectedly eccentric humor, ill-appointed and illogical behavior; his efforts to rescue his daughter from a vain life, a brutal workplace, and an unstoppable wave of globalization, and the futility of this effort, make the audience unconsciously breathe with him.
Stills from Tony Erdmann
In the first hour of the film, "Tony Erdman" is a semi-retired middle school music teacher named Winfred Conrady (Peter Simonischek). Divorced, he lives with willi, a blind old dog.
Attending a birthday party hosted in advance by his family for his only daughter, who works in Bucharest, Romania, he discovers that Ians (Sandra Hüller), the daughter of a strong woman, is married to a job (she really always wears a wedding ring on her hand), is tired, and looks completely lifeless.
After the birthday party, the daughter flew back to Bucharest, and the father flew to her city uninvited, hoping to help her daughter find the joy of life, but was driven away by the daughter because she was completely illegal.
It seems that this story of the father saving his daughter will lead to the traditional routine of father and daughter reconciliation and elimination of their loneliness.
But Marlen Ade's ambitions go far beyond that. Her first two works demonstrate her grand perspective as a sociologist and the ability of a novelist-like delicate brushstroke to present a "small" story. This film is bigger and more interesting than the previous two.
Usually grand and interesting are difficult to coexist, and with the extra-long length, it is a disaster. The secret of Tony Erdman's reluctance to end the film is to patiently lead the audience into a deep and ever-changing world. Not only the relationship between Conradi's father and daughter, but also the workplace relationship between multinational enterprises, the relationship between developed and developing countries, gender differences, and the process of globalization, etc., have become the background of this super long picture.
This generation gap and change are so common that no matter what country you come from, you should be able to empathize with it. This is the first aspect of the film.
The second level, in this world of colliding values, the old is disappearing and the new is thriving. However, at some point, we unexpectedly find that the old things are still continuing, and they have not all disappeared.
Admittedly, the world is changing too fast. Yet even in this film, which is mostly shot at modern clubs, luxury hotels, modern office buildings and minimalist spacious apartments, shots of colorful slums and ugly construction sites still dangle through.
In the hearts of those who are running forward, they finally have a hippie playful attitude that is incompatible with the modern spirit of rigor, hard work, and planning.
The "continuation-reincarnation" proposition, which rarely appears in Western films, coupled with the dry humor of the German father and daughter, and the nuanced depiction of each character and the relationship between the characters, are the reasons why the film is well received in the Western world and can also impress Eastern audiences.
In the film, the father, Winfred Conrady, has three image changes.
The first time, as mentioned earlier, he is a music teacher who loves mischief, paints corpse faces and leads students to the stage to sing, using the death metaphor to retire to send off colleagues, the atmosphere is a little awkward, and his attitude is non-committal. The beloved old dog will die quietly, and the mother will report to another world. He doesn't know why he lives, but instinctively decides to "save" his daughter, who seems to be crushed by work.
The second time, the father was driven home by his daughter. Turning around, he put on a false braces and wig to transform into "Tony Erdman", frequently appearing on important occasions in his daughter's career, becoming a nightmare that her daughter feared would see as soon as she turned back.
He consciously or unconsciously humiliated his daughter, made up various identities for himself in front of her, and ran the train with his mouth full of mouths; the daughter dared to be angry, but found that the nervous father had left a deep impression on his friends, superiors, and even the Romanian ambassador.
Essentially, they are people from two worlds.
Born in The European Baby Boomer, his father was deeply influenced by hippie culture in his adolescence, and he had no ambitions and did whatever he wanted, and his sadness and happiness were in the present, and his mischief was completely without regard to the consequences. My daughter lives in an era of fierce competition and a booming globalization process. When she was a child, she must have admired her father's way of dealing with the world, but when she grew up, she quickly abandoned her father's values and vowed to find a prominent position for herself in the world.
The difference between father and daughter can be summed up in two sentences.
Father: "Are you human or not?" ”
Daughter: "Have you ever planned your life?" ”
Behind the father and daughter is the difference between the two generations.
The former is self-sufficient, content with destiny and cynical against mainstream social values; the latter is ambitious, not only to compete for a place in the workplace, but also to intervene with his consulting firm to take on the responsibility of firing hundreds of employees for oil companies.
At the beginning of the film, the father asks his daughter's assistant, Ingrid Bisu, who came to receive him, how she understood the English word "performance" . Anka understands it as being able to follow the rules and meet her boss's expectations of her. My father's understanding was the opposite—to behave against the rules, even to the point of creating a new self, Tony Erdman.
Once, the father and daughter came together to the construction site of the oil company. The father guiltily said to the old worker, "Always keep a sense of humor." ”
His daughter criticized him, "How can you say such a thing to someone who is about to be fired!" ”
Even if it is portrayed as accurately as a sociological survey, Tony Erdmann is not a documentary after all. Or rather, there is no documentary/film without a point of view. Director Marlen Ade quietly depicts the relationship between a group of people, including sexism in the workplace, strict hierarchy, so-called "team building", hypocrisy in the business and politics, and the grandiose and cruel nature of globalization, which implies a distinct personal likes and dislikes.
The third change in the father's image is the climax of the film. The always serious daughter greets visitors naked at her birthday party without warning and stipulates that "to enhance team cohesion, it will be a nude party". The director did not explain why her behavior had suddenly changed, so it was particularly shocking.
After fighting in the workplace for too long, she almost forgot about right and wrong and principles, to meet the requirements of clients and superiors, and to persuade them to accept her opinion as the criterion for personal values. She felt that the funny and ugly "Tony Erdman" insulted her at every turn, but suddenly woke up, and what really insulted her was the environment that made her mind become so simple and terrible.
At this time, Erdmann, who appears again, transforms into a black-haired Bulgarian legendary monster whose role is to "drive out evil spirits". He frightened his daughter's boss, amused the children in the street garden, and got a big hug from his daughter who chased him barefoot.
He did expel the "evil spirits" for his daughter. She eventually leaves the company, takes dentures out of her grandmother's pocket after her grandmother's funeral, puts them on, grabs another of her grandmother's hats, and sneaks a joke, and the film ends.
At the end of the 162-minute film, we remember this Bulgarian monster, with a different understanding of corporate "team building" and unstoppable "globalization"; we also ask ourselves whether the values of the old and new worlds are really one-or-the-other and difficult to reconcile. We get what we want from a battlefield-like workplace, but unconsciously, the price seems to be greater.
The role of "Tony Erdman" may disappear from here, and the strong woman Ians continues her migratory bird career. Nothing seems to have changed, but the way viewers look at the world may change even a little bit as a result of the film.