Director: Ben von Grafenstein (Germany). Year of Release: 2023
A lake in Brandenburg. A man is rowing a small boat backwards, while listening to a female voice on a podcast. Not looking where he is going, his boat crashes into the surfboard of a woman in a wetsuit. She recognises him as the local film director and flirtily asks him to bring some videos of his work around to her house. The pair exchanges pleasantries, and then make their way further down the lake in different directions.
While it is true that Lászlo is indeed a film director, it appears that his best days are behind him. Funding for his latest project has been cancelled because he is seen as being too old and infirm, and he is entering an existential crisis. His friends tell him that he should become a conservationist or go into politics. Meanwhile, Lászlo’s actor wife Emma has been offered a film role in Canada, and is currently spending endless calls chatting to her new bosses on the phone in English.
The story of how a middle aged professional is worried that his wife might be earning more than him may seem a little safe – a bit Terry and June, say. This is because this is exactly what it is. Lászlo’s life is never put into any jeopardy. Notwithstanding his midlife crisis, he continues to live in his comfortable house and go boating on the lake. He enters an affair with Lisa, the businesswoman in the wetsuit, not so much from passion but because he is bored.
A little plot appears, embodied by Timo Weidland, who has drifted to the right since he and Lászlo were close. Weidland invites his old friend to join his party, but Lászlo is too much of a liberal. When pushed, he notes that he is an Austrian with Hungarian roots, and wouldn’t be made welcome in a party whose main policy is to get rid of foreigners. And if this were not enough, Weidland is Lisa’s ex, which often seems to irritate Lászlo more than his neo-Nazi politics.
Weidland is standing to become the local mayor, and when his opponent is intimidated out of taking part in the election, Lászlo’s friends encourage him to stand. At first, Lászlo doesn’t want anything to do with it, but after he gets enraged at a local festival (complete with “exotic” belly dancer and naff Schlager music), he joins the election in a fit of pique. As with most actions in the film, Lászlo’s main motivation is helplessness and a need to move the plot along.
For no obvious dramatic reason, Lászlo visits his 90-year old mother in Hungary. She tells him that his father is not the man who brought him up, but a government official with whom she once had an affair with. This may not be intended, but there is something slightly paramilitary about the uniform worn by Lászlo’s real father in the photograph his mother shows him. Knowing that she is from a country currently run by Viktor Orbán adds to the feeling that Lászlo’s father is not kosher.
How do you satirise the AfD at a time when the party which is full of Fascists is poised to do well in elections in 3 of the 5 East German States, where it may become the most popular party. Überleben in Brandenburg shows how such a satire should not take place. It is full of the liberal smugness which presumes that the right wing politics which are becoming so popular are so laughable that you only have to insinuate someone is an AfD member to win the argument.
But the candidate in the film who offers the least clarity is the liberal Lászlo. Whereas Weidland has at the very least a clear programme, Lászlo is unclear about what he stands for, other than a vague self-entitled sense of decency. When asked whether he is Left, Right, or Centre, he cannot answer. Maybe I’m missing the satire, and we are watching a depiction of middle class smugness in the face of economic crisis which has helped the AfD to rise. Maybe, but I’m not convinced.
Of course, the answers to the problems posed by the international growth of the far right will not be primarily found in weak comedies, but you do find yourself asking: why did they try this in the first place? Wouldn’t they have been better making a mild mannered “where did you last see your trousers?”-type comedy without trying to make any specific political point. The fact that the AfD threat is raised and then dealt with so badly is so much worse than not mentioning it at all.
On top of this, Überleben in Brandenburg pronounces that is satirising age discrimination, but then tries to often to go for the cheap laugh. Do you find the thought of older people having sex hilarious, especially when one of them puts his back out? Then this is the film for you. Otherwise, congratulations to a film which is prepared to use older actors, but commiserations that it fails to make any of these characters remotely interesting or sympathetic.
Überleben in Brandenburg isn’t as bad as it could have been. It could have been offensive and it ended up just being boring. Above all, it is never clear whether the film is satirising Brandenburg village life or celebrating it. Is the routine drudgery of the characters’ lives an explanation of their infidelity and right wing politics, or is it being offered as something we should aspire towards? Either way, we feel such a distance from what we see on screen that it’s hard to empathise.
There’s a possible good joke in Überleben in Brandenburg. Ok, not a good joke, but a joke all the same. Online references to the film sometimes call it “Überleben in Brandenburg” (survival in Brandenburg) and sometimes “Über Leben in Brandenburg” (about life in Brandenburg). That’s funny, isn’t it? Of course, I know it isn’t but if you do try and raise some good will for the film, there are very slim pickings.
Ultimately, this is a film which tries so hard to please everyone, that it ends up annoying many. It didn’t annoy everyone, mind. At tonight’s showing, a number of the audience members laughed regularly, even though I was honestly unable to see what they were laughing at. But these were at best populist jokes, which were not funny as such, but just used the rhythm of proper jokes. Or maybe I’m just an élitist snob who missed some really subtle humour. Maybe, but I’m not so sure.
CinePhil 