[144 points / 15 votes]
“No, it’s not a comedy, it’s a drama.” – Maren Ade describing her film Toni Erdmann after referring to it as a 3-hour comedy.
"The circular irony in the remark above is that not even the writer/director/producer knows how to adequately place her film into a predescribed genre. In fact, Toni Erdmann is probably one of the hardest films to pin down from moment to moment, as you will ever encounter. The film is at once hilarious and heart wrenching, uncomfortable and comforting, surreal and honestly real.
"If you are familiar with Maren Ade’s work, this inharmonious array of stylings may represent something of a trademark quality. Her college thesis film Forest for the Trees centers around a young teacher in a new city, struggling to connect with her students and co-workers and her inability to make friends outside of work. The film went on to be accepted into the 2003 Toronto Film Festival and is something of a minor masterpiece. Seemingly descended from the Dogme-95 movement but alive in a way that none of those films ever managed to be, Ade was immediately a name to watch out for. Special recognition should be given to the media label Film Movement for originally jumping on this work and distributing within the US on home video.
"If any doubts existed as to the caliber of Ade as a writer/director following her debut, her sophomore effort Everyone Else (2009) should have set that record straight. Billed as a romantic comedy, the film charts a young German couple on holiday as they navigate a minefield of insecurities surrounding their careers, relationship status, and obsessing over what their peer’s may or may not think about them. You could call the film romantic if it wasn’t so damn depressing and likewise it’s a comedic gem if at a given moment, things didn’t take an about face into Cassavetes level angst every other minute. Scenes are structured masterfully with Ade’s camera taking a restrained approach and allowing the actors and script to evolve naturally in front of us. The sentiment on display throughout is pretty clear, and again it is that circular irony of Ade’s; we all want to be like everyone else but everyone, to a degree, is fucked up and miserable. Happiness and unhappiness are intrinsically linked in ways we probably shouldn’t comprehend.
"When I was asked to contribute some words on Toni Erdmann, it only seemed natural to use 2/3rds of those words discussing its creator and her body of work. Taken on its own, the film is pretty out there, but contextualized with the likes of Forest for the Trees and Everyone Else, Toni Erdmann follows a natural progression down what I’ll refer to as Ade’s 'Dilemma of the Awkward.'
“'Imagine we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we realize that a dead body is standing behind the door. In that same moment the room in which we sit begins to change, and each everyday thing in it begins to look different…It is we who have changed and things become what we perceive them to be.' Carl Th. Dreyer on the element of horror in Vampyr
"Toni Erdmann at its most simple is about a father and a daughter trying to connect with one and other. When Winfried (a brilliant Peter Simonischek) loses the one thing in his life keeping him grounded – his dog – he takes it upon himself to pay a surprise visit to his estranged daughter Ines (equally brilliant Sandra Huller) who is in Bucharest on business. Winifred loves gags and loves to play roles and pretend to be other people. You get the impression he was frequently the type of parent who took harmless delight in embarrassing his child in front of their friends.
"From their first encounter in a hotel lobby, where neither father nor daughter exchanges so much as a word, the Dilemma of the Awkward is in full effect. Like Dreyer’s approach to Horror, Ade is using her trademark sense of 'awkward' to enhance and extract deeper meaning out of each and every set-up. As the film progresses, these encounters become increasingly bizarre, with things progressing to a crescendo the likes of which would have made Luis Bunuel stand up and applaud. That alone is a feat and something that makes Toni Erdmann something to seek out. What takes Ade’s film beyond this however, and firmly plants it as one of the best films of the year, is that lump that resides in your throat when these moments occur. The dilemma that rests in the viewers heart is that what we are seeing is really awkward but yet it is real, goddamn alive, in a way that it could not be without the 'awkward.' It’s a cinematic voice we’ve been lacking since the inception of the medium and we need to welcome with open arms, bad wig, false teeth, Bulgarian kuker included. Even if we formally reject it at first and have to chase it down the street to say thank you. Give this film a hug. It will hold you back just as tight." ~ Adam Lemke
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