Year:  2022

Director:  Eva Weber

Rated:  PG

Release:  June 1, 2023

Distributor: Madman

Running time: 94 minutes

Worth: $18.00
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Cast:
Angela Merkel, Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton

Intro:
... it works well as a bit of a history lesson as well as a portrait of an individual.

This is a top-notch doco about – of course – the extraordinary Angela Merkel. It comes replete with an artfully selected mass of archival footage, old interviews with her and pertinent present-day ones with the likes of Tony Blair (“The divine feature of Angela is the lack of ego”), Hillary Clinton, less famous politicians, her former colleagues, and journalists. As it underlines, hers was an unusual career path to Germany’s top job: growing up in East Germany for a start, the move from science (she has a Ph.D. in physics) to politics, and the sheer fact of being a woman.

What makes this consistently interesting is that it works well as a bit of a history lesson as well as a portrait of an individual. The clips from the DDR are particularly revelatory, and then there is of course the Berlin Wall coming down. Another highlight – in a retrospectively scary way – is her encounter with a typically Machiavellian Putin on her first state visit to Russia. And then there are the meetings with Trump, in which the body language speaks volumes. Merkel may be droll, sardonic and guarded, but it is for her moral courage in admitting a million refugees from Syria (and elsewhere) that she will be best remembered.

The most unusual thing about Merkel may be that you needn’t necessarily share all  her political views to admire her. She’s that rarity of rarities, a (former) national leader who’s completely sincere, principled, incorruptible and lacking in greed. Throughout her sixteen years as chancellor of Germany she kept her private life to herself, and this well-constructed film respects that privacy – perhaps a tad more than the curious viewer might wish. It also glosses over the faults and dubious policy decisions early in her time in office, but it remains a fascinating documentary.

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