“Angela Merkel – In the course of time”, a film portrait by Torsten Körner
An hour and a half of film portraits are almost over when Angela Merkel speaks a sentence that perhaps describes her better than 90 minutes of television. When asked about a Bundestag speech on the subject of Corona, which was passionate by her standards, she says: “It was an attempt to use very strong emotionality to remind people that the virus is actually totally predictable.”
He wanted to make a “political road movie” about the until recently eternal chancellor, says Torsten Körner, the author of “Angela Merkel – Im Lauf der Zeit”, but apparently not that political either. According to Körner, it is also about “feelings that we shared with her”. In fact, that’s what it’s all about, especially in the most embarrassing moments of this film.
As I said: On the subject of “sensations”, Merkel’s own sentence about the “attempt” to convince people of “total predictability” through “emotionality” would have been completely sufficient. What a wonderful self-description of a public person for whom – and this is not necessarily a reproach – even emotions are still part of an experimental arrangement in which predictability is the main concern.
But we live in times of personalization and emotionalization, and that’s why we can admire several times during the hour and a half that this woman is obviously a real human being.
The Berlin correspondent Kristina Dunz (who is also not unknown to the FR readership) beams about “the self-irony” “that this Chancellor also has”, and the actor Ulrich Matthes enthuses that privately she is “so much more impulsive, funnier” and, Warning: she even gave Matthes a hug at the end of a conversation about private worries.
Anyone who needs it may enjoy all of this, and it would be unfair to this film to suggest that it doesn’t have more to offer than this level borrowed from the tabloids. In fact, the “political” aspect of the “road movie” is clearly evident: Above all, the differentiated and critical interview passages with the Green politician Aminata Touré, the climate activist Luisa Neubauer, the migration researcher Naika Faroutan and the virologist Melanie Brinkmann ensure that Körner’s play is not in the most dangerous portrait trap is running: losing your inner distance from approaching a person. The fact that Barack Obama, Christine Lagarde and Theresa May also have their say is very nice, but not quite as insightful as the comments of the women mentioned first.
However, and this leaves the result, despite the elaborate staging, in the gray area between seriousness and insignificance: the film does not even attempt a certain analytical depth. Not when it comes to the financial crisis, not when it comes to climate protection, not when it comes to migration, corona or foreign policy. Most likely where fundamental criticism would actually be out of place: the sovereignty with which Angela Merkel has asserted herself in a male-dominated world is convincingly expressed.
But where it gets critical, the whole thing remains very superficial. Example flight: Merkel describes the development up to the autumn of 2015 in her very special way as “escalation of a situation that was building up, which then culminated with this Hungarian situation” – as if the flight movements to the Hungarian-Austrian border and at the countless deaths in the Mediterranean, it was a natural phenomenon and not the result of German and European politics. And the journalist Dunz rejoices: “Then you have a chancellor whose first task, which she set herself, was to show humanity.”
It is bizarre that it is Merkel herself who has admitted to having relied for too long on the Dublin procedure, which was primarily intended to keep refugees away from Germany’s borders. But the fact that the EU-Turkey agreement actually served the same goal, only that the isolation has now been moved to the European external borders, is not even mentioned. The critical comments, for example by Aminata Touré, on the overall restrictive asylum policy are almost lost.
The film, which dispenses entirely with its own comments, is “open to interpretation,” author Körner said. “I don’t want to claim that I know how it could have been better.” Yes, nobody would have asked for Körner to know that. But a little more interest in “how it could have been better” would certainly have benefited the film.
“Angela Merkel – over time”: Arte, 8:15 p.m. – ARD, Sunday, 9:45 p.m. Already in the media libraries of Arte and ARD.
