Friday, March 15, 2024

Sandra Hüller Takes Off in “Toni Erdmann”

There was German actress Sandra Hüller at the Oscars last weekend, looking sleek and pretty as she beamed for the cameras. But we also saw her on-screen in film clips: as an accused murderer cruelly deriding her late husband; as a Nazi wife purring gleefully as she tried on someone else’s fur coat and lipstick. So what are we to make of this woman, formerly unknown to most American audiences? Out of curiosity, I decided to watch the 2016 German film that first put Hüller on the world cinema map. Toni Erdmann, written and directed by Maren Ade, won awards all over Europe, and was an Oscar nominee for foreign language feature. I knew nothing about it, but sensed it was off-beat. An English-language poster full of review quotes contained language like this: “Wildly imaginative!” and “It’s absolutely nuts!”

 It's also long (162 minutes), and for much of the early going I debated about switching off the video. The story begins with a white-haired German man, Winfried Conradi, opening the door to a delivery guy and implying that the package that’s arriving contains bomb-making materials. Winfried, who’s a divorced music teacher, likes to play bizarre practical jokes, sometimes donning a mop of a wig and a snaggly set of fake teeth to shock those around him. Hüller enters later as his grown daughter Ines, a successful businesswoman visiting from her high-power job in Bucharest, Romania. She’s in town to visit relatives, but can’t be torn away from her ever-present mobile phone.

 The scene shifts to Bucharest, where we see more of Ines’ work life. Under constant stress from a need to please her bosses, she shoves herself daily into a business-like dark suit and very high heels, then coils her blonde hair into a tight French twist before setting out to make presentations to clients. She has a social life of sorts, but it’s always being interrupted by her strong sense of obligation to bosses who don’t always seem to have her best interests in mind. It’s only in a scene with her co-worker/lover—she’s uncharacteristically wearing a short, tight dress that doesn’t flatter—that we start to discover she’s incapable of truly feeling pleasure.

 Into this tense atmosphere comes Winfried in his wig and fake teeth, introducing himself to Ines and her colleagues as an unlikely “life coach” named Toni Erdmann. The more that Ines tries to send him back to Germany, the more he pops up in her life, mingling with those in her circle and even claiming to be the German ambassador: they try to be polite but are clearly confused.  It’s at this juncture that Ines seems to reach her breaking point. She’s been asked by the higher-ups to turn her birthday celebration into a team-building exercise via a party at her comfortable flat. She’s put out a spread of fancy foods and is struggling to pull herself into a colorful frock . . . but then something in her seems to give way. I won’t spoil all the surprises, but will merely say that after that wild and crazy sequence the audience starts looking at Ines in an entirely different way.

 By the end, we’re back in Winfried’s German home town, for the staging of an elderly relative’s funeral. Once again father and daughter come together, for an interchange that’s surprisingly poignant. Both, I think, have changed—but Ines has clearly learned some key truths about herself, and we expect her future will be somehow much different from what has gone before. Brava to Sandra Hüller, who has shown us that she contains many possibilities.  


 

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Going for the Gold: The 2024 Oscar Ceremony

        

For years, ever since I can remember, I’ve watched the Oscar telecast. At first it was a chance to participate in my parents’ world by discovering the movies that excited them. I vividly recall how thrilled they were when the modestly-budgeted Marty beat out some schmaltzy epics like Love is a Many Splendored Thing. And decades later, during my father’s final illness, I remember him cheering for Schindler’s List at a time when he was much too frail to actually watch such an intense drama. In 1968, for perhaps the first time, I’d seen all the  Best Picture nominees, and felt that most of them (The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night) significantly touched on the issues that were rocking my own world. My fascination with the 1968 ceremony—which gave golden statuettes to In the Heat of the Night and director Mike Nichols for The Graduate—led me in a highly roundabout way to the writing of my most recent book, Seduced by Mrs. Robinson.

 All and all, I’ve loved the pomp and circumstance surrounding the Oscars. Which doesn’t mean I’ve always agreed with the prize-winners. And certain ceremonies, like that weird mid-pandemic celebration held at L.A.’s Union Station (it was all set up to give its ultimate honor to the late Chadwick Boseman, but Anthony Hopkins spoiled the party) have left me with a bad taste in my mouth. But I agree with those pundits proclaiming this year’s event as one of the best in recent memory. First of all, the nominees were an exciting mix of supersized blockbusters, intimate dramas, and comedies that had something to say. I also appreciated the internationalism of the nominee roster, including the fact that the five powerful films on the feature-length documentary list were all from countries outside the U.S. One of the evening’s most powerful moments came when the Ukrainian director of 20 Days in Mariupol proclaimed that he wished his film hadn’t needed to be made, but that in documenting the Russian invasion of one of Ukraine’s largest cities he was obeying the precept that “cinema forms memories and memories form history.”  I appreciated, too, the carefully crafted words of Jonathan Glazer, Oscar-winner for a uniquely staged Holocaust drama, The Zone of Interest, who decried both the October 7 massacre in Israel and the deaths now dominating the news from Gaza.

 It was also worth noting that German-born actress Sandra Hüller was introduced to many of us via not one but two best picture nominees, The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of Fall. For her performance in the latter, she was nominated for a Best Actress statuette. Though she didn’t win, she aroused my curiosity to the point where I sat down to watch an earlier Hüller-starring vehicle, Toni Erdmann, in which I saw far more of her than I expected. The Oscars can definitely be considered educational.

 But of course an Oscar ceremony wouldn’t be fun without a large dose of silliness. In that category I’d put the evening’s most extravagant musical number, the pink and perky “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie. I’d also include some pretty hilarious gowns, so extravagantly poufy that woe to anyone sitting next to the wearer of one of them. (Paul Giamatti, though, didn’t seem to mind.) Also in the silly category, the very undraped, very muscle-bound John Cena presenting the statuette for Best Costume Design. And, too, something I only THOUGHT was a gag, a social media post from a certain former U.S. President lambasting Jimmy Kimmel’s hosting gig. Yes, it really happened.


 

Friday, March 8, 2024

“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar . . . and Wes Anderson”

I seem to be having a bit of a private Wes Anderson festival lately. Some cinematic research led me to re-watch Moonrise Kingdom, The French Dispatch, and his latest, Asteroid City. As always, I was charmed by Anderson’s enchanting visuals, and by his use of some of the world’s best actors in quirky and unexpected ways. And yet I could never shake the notion that most of Anderson’s work is much ado about nothing: that he lacks the story sense to make something that actually has meaning. With Oscar night coming up so soon, it’s appropriate to mention that Anderson’s films have never lacked for Academy love. Over the years, there have been 16 nominations in various categories,  most of them technical. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014—perhaps the Anderson work with the most to say) actually collected 9 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. And it won statuettes for its costume design, hair and makeup, production design, and original score. Still, the big prizes have eluded Anderson himself, maybe because many Academy voters see Anderson’s works as charming stunts, rather than as truly meaningful creations.

 Perhaps this will be the year when Anderson finally wins his own Oscar. He’s on the short list not for Asteroid City (which got shut out of all categories) but for his forty-minute adaptation of a Roald Dahl tale, “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.” Dah’s whimsical though sometimes macabre way of looking at the world seems to beautifully suit Anderson’s stylistics, allowing him to romp visually while giving some spine to his storytelling. Clearly Anderson is on a Roald Dahl kick: for Netflix he has applied  his cinematic skills to a whole 1976 volume of Dahl stories, of which “Henry Sugar” is the first and best.

 For “Henry Sugar,” Anderson enjoys the services of some of England’s finest, including Benedict Cumberbatch (as the title character), along with Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, and (playing a version of Dahl himself) Ralph Fiennes. All seem to have been directed to play straight to the camera, delivering their lines at a speedy deadpan clip as though they were reading straight from the Dahl text. And what a text it is, comprising an exotic tale within a tale. Fiennes as Dahl introduces us to Henry, a wealthy Englishman whose only goal is increasing his substantial fortune by playing cards for money. In his countryman’s well-furnished library he happens upon the account of an Indian mystic who learned after years of strenuous concentration to read with his eyes securely bandaged. To Henry, the knowledge of this possibility leads immediately to thoughts of how he can best his card-playing cronies by being able to read the cards in a deck though only seeing their backsides. He applies himself to this effort, and succeeds magnificently, coming away with a brick-sized packet of cold, hard cash. But of course things don’t work out as planned, and Dahl’s neat twist of an ending shows us the surprising ways that greed can work on the human psyche.

 Dahl has supplied the story line: Anderson contributes his own magic, mostly of the visual variety. His locations—whether they represent Dahl’s cozy writing cottage, a baronial stately home, an Indian guru’s jungle hut, or a hospital lounge—all seem as artificial as stage sets, and they come apart and re-form (with the help, at times, of stagehands) with dazzling speed. What Anderson has achieved is a short film that gives us the immediacy, and the aesthetic pleasure, of live theatre. Which makes me wonder: why doesn’t Anderson give stage work a try?