Encontrando Gorbachev

Rating of Subject (Gorbachov): 5 Rating of Herzog's lifetime body of work: 9/10 This hagiographic film: 3 stars at best

The simple fact is that in terms of the tearing off of the USSR control of over 100 million subjugated people in eastern Europe, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Lech Walesa were the major players, and Gorbachev was more or less swept along by events rather than participating steering them. Even historians on the left in Poland, Hungary, the Czech republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukrainian,e, Belorussian, the Baltic countries even Germany widely acknowledge this. Gorbachev ought to have been asked by Herzog if he would acknowledge the debt he and the citizens of former Soviet Russia have to the brave people in Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, etc.

Don't get me wrong. Herzog is a genius. After Greenaway, he is my favorite. The imagery, the laconic way he narrates the surreal in his documentaries, and his crafting of his fictional work are without par. But he fails when he gets political. And he is at the very least, proffering up survivor bias, because, well, Gorbachev is alive and can spin his role, while Reagan and Thatcher are dead. Gorbachev makes so many frankly untrue statements unchallenged in "Meeting" that it is stunning.

Is meeting Gorbachev as bad as "Bad Lieutenant II" or "Salt and Fire"? NO. Anywhere near the level of Aguirre, Fitzcaraldo, Cave? also an emphatic: NO.

It was sad to see Gorbachev so old and incapable of producing anything but a few simplistic sentences on camera. It makes me wonder if that was even necessary to include any footage of an old sick man and whether it adds anything to the history-recap-101 genre to which this documentary gravitates.

In 90 minutes, It is impossible to present the political lay-of-the-land of the 1980s to establish context for this historical figure. The film intertwines history channel-like snippets of major historical events with trite commentaries of Gorbachev's contemporaries and Herzog himself.

Do we learn anything about Gorbachev beyond the wiki-level factoids? No. Does this film convey that there is another dimension to the person that it tries to explore? Absolutely not. If anything, people and events in this film are presented with almost distracting unidimensionality.

The main value of this film is probably limited to the nostalgic documentary footage that is sprinkled over the meaningless monologues and the lulling senile voice of Werner Herzog that creates an anticipation for something deeper than is being delivered on the screen.

"Meeting Gorbachev" (2018 release; 90 min.) is a documentary about the life and times of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last President of the Soviet Union. As the movie opens, Gorbachev receives the crew in his office, where he is presented with chocolate (without sugar due to his diabetes) for his 87th birthday. Herzog informs us that it is April, 2018, and it is his third and last interview of Gorbachev in a span of 6 months. We then go back in time, as Herzog looks at Gorbachev's upbringing in the remote Stavropol region in the Soviet south. At this point we are less than 10 min. into the movie.

Couple of comments: this is the latest movie from writer-director Werner Herzog. Here he digs into the life of one of the pivotal leaders of the 20th century. Herzog sets the table nicely, showing us the early 80s, by which the Soviet Union was run into the ground, socially, morally and economically, and that drastic change (the Russian word for that being "perestroika") was needed. By the time Gorbachev came into power in the mid-80s, it was almost too late. Then the Chernobyl nuclear disaster took place in 1986, leading to another priority for Gorbachev: nuclear disarmament. The interviews themselves are okay (no major new revelations), what made the documentary work so well is the bigger picture, and how quickly it all happened. Werner Herzog, not a spring chicken either (he's not a crisp 78 years young) has made many documentaries before, and I typically love them. I've come to the point that as soon as I see Herzog's name associated with a documentary, I'll go watch it, period. Heck, he could probably even make a documentary about the Yellow Pages look and sound interesting. As for Gorbachev, he will forever be a beloved figure in the West, but not so much at home. When asked by Herzog what should be on his tombstone, Gorbachev responds: "We tried". (Incidentally, I visited the Soviet Union in 1983 while attending university in Belgium, and witnessed first hand the long lines of people trying to buy food staples from mostly empty store fronts. Absolutely amazing.)

"Meeting Gorbachev" premiered at last year's Telluride film festival to positive buzz, and it is no accident this movie is currently 100% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The Saturday screening where I saw this at was attended okay but not great (exactly 10 people). If you have an interest in geopolitics or important world leaders, you could a lot worse than this and I invite you to check it out, be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

Initially, let's negate the canucky review as a blind-sided tRump supporter's ignorant response to not even seeing the film, or the likelihood of the ignorant review should not of occurred, but knowing the low education of such maga wearers who knows. annunciaroe's review is very good, yet devoid of substance which I admit may qualify as spoilers. I too wish the drunkard Boris Yeltsin, as he was known to unabashedly be, or the evil Putin, who continued to allow those with the greatest wealth to corrupt the current country collective, were allowed to be acknowledged for what it was and still is, yet this German director stays focused on the illustrious career and selfish coup, while Gorbachev was away on vacation, to be played out through only the events as they occurred. One does have pause to wonder how they were left out to properly show comparison to the great goodwill President of the former Russia to the progressive movements to unite the people's goodwill and well being of Russia, to the unifier of the two Germanys (thankfully little mention of Reagan as the decision to tear down the wall was made long before between Helmut Kohl & Gorby), as well as, Gorbechev's instigator of the world's nuclear weapons short & medium range nuclear arms reductions. There is only so much time a movie can allow to capture an audience, though much was left out itemizing specifics, other world leaders and Secretary of States acknowledge the greatness, sincerity, and intelligence of one of the modern worlds leaders, Mikhail Gorbachev, who legacy will be admired for hundreds of years to come, one can agree, if one watches this honest and lie-free documentary, something the US & world desperately need to report more of, knowing todays political environment.

This film is one of the most informative and interesting documentaries which I have seen. If I were to compare it to another documentary it would be like a cross between "Won't You Be My Neighbor" and "The Civil War." On the one hand it is a character study but on the other it is the story of the fall of the USSR. Through it all, we have Werner Herzog casting his own brand of eccentric existentialism over the film.

Describing the film is hard because it is someone's life story and as I found it fascinating, I would love to expound it for you. That would be tragic though as Herzog has already told the story through film and in a much better and meaningful way than I could manage.

The story of Gorbachev's life is certainly very different than I expected. I suppose part of that is because of the natural distrust Americans tend to have still in our films and TV as a remnant from the 80s. What I found out instead was that he was a very admirable man, flawed to be sure, but admirable. He had tremendous love for his country and most importantly the people of that country.

One of the most interesting parts of the film is Gorbachev's involvement in the ending of the Cold War. Herzog does a great job of showing how vital it is for world leaders to work together toward the common ends of security and life for all people. One of the great takeaways from the movie is really how terrible a force personal greed and power grabbing is when it is allowed into national politics.

As I walked out of the film I couldn't help but think how desperately short of that kind of politician or even person our world seems to be. Politicians who can learn from their mistakes and change their attitudes for the good of the people rather than for their own personal gains seem to be not so much the norm or the minority anymore. Sometimes they feel more like the extreme outliers in a world shaped more by grabbing for resources and table scrap economics for those who need help the most.