With “Angela Merkel – In the course of time” the already well-stocked film archive on Germany’s first female chancellor has been enriched by one work. But in just one minute of the portrait, a trump card suddenly becomes visible.
There is this one moment in “Angela Merkel – Over Time” that provides a key insight. A realization that Merkel’s 16-year chancellorship sums up. A film scene that lasts only 66 seconds is enough for this – and still gives a rare insight into the inner life of a politician. Especially with Angela Merkel. So the woman of all people who has avoided revealing her feelings to the public over the years.
It is December 9, 2020. Angela Merkel looks tired. In a wine-red blazer, she steps up to the lectern in the Bundestag and does something extraordinary for her. She gets emotional. “I just want to say that if we have too many contacts before Christmas and then it was the last Christmas with the grandparents, then we will have missed something,” she urged MPs to go into lockdown.
Photo series with 32 pictures
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Now you could think: Angela Merkel and emotionality – that alone is already a valuable insight. But Torsten Körner, who portrayed the Chancellor in 2016 for the film “The Unexpected”, succeeds in drilling deep. The only real coup in “Angela Merkel – Over Time”, but more on that later. He asks her about this speech and thus gets the ex-chancellor to explain her entire political style.
Two interviews, two outfits: In the film, Angela Merkel appears once in purple and once in matt pink. (Source: MDR/BROADVIEW TV)
“It was an attempt to use very strong emotionality to remind people that this virus is actually totally predictable. It’s very simple what this virus does,” Merkel describes the structure of her speech and concludes: “I was then, Yes, you have to say, desperate that it’s all so easy to see, but nobody wanted it or a lot of people didn’t want to admit it. And that’s what led me to this emotional performance.”
And then comes the key finding. Angela Merkel judges herself: “However, I have to say that the effectiveness was no better than if I had spoken very coolly and without emotion. So what is always said, ‘Oh, if she were a bit more emotional, we would follow you all’ is not right at all.”
rum. That has sat. The old 2015 image of the “Frozen”, disassembled by the regent herself. In her typical, analytically discursive style.
66 seconds, placed after more than an hour of documentation, and finally this “political road movie”, as the filmmaker himself calls his work, delivers what it promises. Even if Angela Merkel had been more emotional, approachable, popular or full of passion: It would not have changed anything – Angela Merkel remains Angela Merkel.
The “Merkel Merkel” remains pale
It is an interpretation that also applies to the film itself. The journey through time, created between May and December 2021, is certainly a portrait of an influential political figure that is well worth seeing. In two different interviews with Angela Merkel in the Chancellery, Torsten Körner not only spoke about her 16 years at the top, but also about her path to power. From “Helmut Kohl’s girl” to the power politician who chooses her own end and on December 8, 2021 puts government affairs in the hands of Olaf Scholz. About a woman who is dubbed the “Late Night Lady” in the film by Christine Lagarde because of her long nights of negotiation, or by Barack Obama as an “outsider” because she was Germany’s first female chancellor.
But apart from the undisputedly sensational interlocutors, among whom Theresa May and Ursula von der Leyen should also be mentioned, the film delivers little that is groundbreaking. The biographical search for clues bogged down in the GDR past and the stories about Horst Kasner, her father, the Protestant pastor. Anecdotes about Merkel’s warm-heartedness, told by her friend, the actor Ulrich Matthes, only scratch the surface. The question about “Merkel the human being,” which has been asked so often, is not answered here either. Even if Merkel’s refugee policy is given a lot of space, her iconic words “We can do it” and “A friendly face” are remembered, the personality of the 67-year-old remains largely pale.
Barack Obama: The ex-US President speaks very highly of the former Chancellor Merkel. (Source: MDR/BROADVIEW TV)
A benevolent film, devoted to the former chancellor, was made for this purpose. “Angela Merkel – In the Course of Time” is similar in style to the classic tribute to great contemporary historical personalities. Time is an important keyword. Torsten Körner plays with the motifs of fast life, the ticking of the clock – and in the end gives less than ten minutes to the topic of climate. Certainly one of the few omissions in terms of content in an otherwise politically intelligently balanced documentation.
Körner’s decision to narrate his film without voiceover leaves the viewers the freedom of interpretation. That’s clever, because the documentary filmmaker avoids the accusation of retrospectively glorifying Angela Merkel. But the choice of his interlocutors, the focal points of the content and the time narrative show how much respect the studied German and theater studies has for the physicist.
This is understandable in view of Merkel’s outstanding achievements, but Körner has to put up with another accusation. “The audience can certainly look forward to an unusual portrait of Merkel and a chancellor who is more personal than before,” he praises his film – and one would like to reply: advertising a 90-minute film with 66 seconds of a real highlight , is daring.
From February 20, “Angela Merkel – Over Time” can be seen in the media libraries. Arte shows it on February 22 at 8:15 p.m., in the first it will be broadcast on February 27 at 9:45 p.m.
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