The first in-depth analysis of Maren Ade’s acclaimed contemporary classic, a generational tug-of-war about the meaning of life, work, and death.
Maren Ade’s tragicomedy
Toni Erdmann, a 2016 Cannes sensation and Oscar nominee, is an internationally acclaimed classic of recent German cinema. By turns hilarious, cringeworthy, and heart-wrenching, the film revolves around Winfried, a retired music teacher and prankster trying to rebuild a relationship with his daughter Ines, a high-powered business consultant based in Bucharest. At its center, this unpredictable scenario pits one type of performance – Ines’s efforts to meet the unyielding expectations of the new economy – against another – Winfried’s anarchic role-play meant to disrupt the standardization of life. This book, the first in-depth analysis of the film, explores the many layers of this generational tug-of-war about the meaning of life, work, and death. Employing Ade’s trademark minimalist style, the film deftly comments on the precarity of life; the gendering of labor in the new economy; the re-definition of feminism by the children of the generation of 1968; and reconfigured East-West relations in post-Wall Europe. Lastly, in light of Ade’s artisanal mode of filmmaking, in which she regularly assumes the role of writer, director, and producer,
Toni Erdmann becomes a highly self-reflexive comment on the neoliberal dictates of global art cinema.
Table of Content
A Question of Performance
A Cannes Sensation
Learning from Andy Kaufman
‘I Like Countries with a Middle Class’
The End(s) of Sleep
‘What do you mean by ‘happy’?’
‘Merkel Kino?’
Credits
Notes
About the author
Gerd Gemünden is Sherman Fairchild Professor in the Humanities at Dartmouth College; Professor of Film and Media Studies; German Studies; and Comparative Literature. He is co-series editor of German Film Classics and the larger series Screen Cultures.
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