My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

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Sunday, May 7, 2017

Can an English-language remake of Toni Erdmann be far behind ?

The 2016 German film  Toni Erdmann is really long - 2 hours 40 minutes - but it doesn't feel long for a second as you watch it - totally entertaining, engaging, and in the end moving w/out being sentimental or soporific. In brief the story is about a 50ish-year-old man who's a practical joker and free spirit, seems to make a modest living via piano lessons and music classes, who is trying to connect with his adult daughter who's deeply devoted to her high-pressure job in a consulting firm proving international corporations with advice on such matters at out-sourcing and down-sizing (i.e., firing union workers and going outside the corp to hire cheap labor). The protog surprises his daughter by showing up unannounced at her base of operations in Bucharest, and he proceeds to cajole her and to act foolish and funny and basically derail her straight-ahead life in the corporate and business world. The movie begins with a great scene involving delivery of a package, believe it or not, and just builds from there: some scenes are hilarious, such as the father, using the name Toni Erdman, poses as the German ambassador to Romania and "punks" a number of the up-tight corporate types and others, the "naked" party, and most unsexy sex scene every filmed. Some scenes are moving and provocative: the dad trying to be comfortable in various staid settings and feeling completely lost and out of place, the sexist belittling of the daughter by assigning her to give shopping advice to the wife of a big client, the visit to a oil refinery where workers will be laid off or fired based on advice from the daughter and her cronies. It would be so easy to make this movie dogmatic or schematic - the daughter completely changing her ways, for ex., and leaving corporate life behind or providing a new "option" for the client under which nobody gets laid off, etc. But the director (Maren Ade) will have none of that, and the movie ends on a poignant, but still somewhat unsettling, note. Smart from start to finish - and I would imagine that an English-language remake (I can picture Jack Black in the lead) isn't far behind, and will no doubt miss the whole point of this drama.

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