Book: The End of a Mission by Heinrich Böll
Film: Toni Erdmann by Maren Ade
Do you subscribe to the stereotypical view that Germans are humourless? Well you’re wrong!! Try out these two works for intelligent and nuanced world views.
I’ve long been a big fan of Böll’s writing; his Group Portrait with Lady ranking high in my ten best books ever. The End of a Mission is a lesser work, but a fine treat nonetheless. A small-town trial concerning an act which might be described as a mere prank is blown up into a political farce so that he can poke fun at the kind of nonsense endemic in totalitarian regimes. Journalists are distracted into covering a less-embarrassing child murderer case and an out-of-town politician has his spy on hand to keep the case under review and nip any possible scandal in the bud. You, the reader, will immediately see that the charges are of no importance. The pomposity of all the officials is handled with a deft irony by Böll which makes for no belly laughs but wry amusement and the sense of reading the work of a massive intellect.
In the film, Toni Erdmann is the pseudonym (or alter-ego?) of the main protagonist, a retired, divorced music teacher. A clown at heart, he is clearly sad that his business-consultant daughter takes life too seriously; she is working her way up the corporate ladder and selling her soul in the process. He follows her to Bucharest where she has a very important client and succeeds in inserting himself into a number of her encounters with the client, embarrassing her but eventually, I think, breaking through to change her outlook. The film is a very satirical take on the business of consulting and, from my own experience, an accurate one. The comedy is played with great seriousness to amazing effect.
Asynchronists 