Meeting Gorbachev
Directed by: Werner Herzog & André Singer
Documentary - 90 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 23 May 2019
Documentary - 90 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 23 May 2019
Westerners must be baffled by Russians today, they praise Vladimir Putin and regard Mikhail Gorbachev as a traitor. Gorbachev was in power when the Berlin Wall fall and during the final gasps of the USSR before it broke apart, leaving chaos and oligarchs in its wake. Even though Gorbachev is an ailing 87 year-old now, he was a spry man of his times and filled with youthful vigor compared to the quick succession of the ancient old guard he succeeded. While Americans derided him as the lead henchman of the Evil Empire, Gorbachev accomplished world changing feats - nuclear arms control, the promises of perestroika and glasnost, and had a large hand in the reunification of Germany. In history’s long arc, Gorbachev is going to win this period of Russian history; Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin will lose.
The documentary, Meeting Gorbachev, is a mostly chronological recitation of the man’s life told directly by him and narrated by co-director Werner Herzog (Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World). Gorbachev sat down with Herzog three times over the course of six months to talk about his humble beginnings, the rise to power, his triumphs, his regrets, and things he would have done differently through hindsight. As mainstream audiences swoon whenever Morgan Freeman narrates them through a story, art house folk feel the same way about Werner Herzog’s voice. The slow, heavily-accented German is music to particular sets of ears.
The documentary, Meeting Gorbachev, is a mostly chronological recitation of the man’s life told directly by him and narrated by co-director Werner Herzog (Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World). Gorbachev sat down with Herzog three times over the course of six months to talk about his humble beginnings, the rise to power, his triumphs, his regrets, and things he would have done differently through hindsight. As mainstream audiences swoon whenever Morgan Freeman narrates them through a story, art house folk feel the same way about Werner Herzog’s voice. The slow, heavily-accented German is music to particular sets of ears.
Gorbachev was not apparatchik royalty; he hails from a backwater farming village where he earned a Communist medal for successful harvests and being a whiz with a combine harvester. Archival photographs are rare from his youth, but there he is with coal-black bare feet with his grandparents and for our pure delight, there he is in college participating in a satire of American sock hop dancing. Soviet impressions of 1950’s American youth deserves its own documentary. Gorbachev studied rural problems and sought practical solutions for them. Unlike his peers in power, he didn’t seek the finest suits and vodka while the proletariat had none. He went to Hungary to find out why their supermarket shelves were full - no wonder the public loved him and the Politburo hid behind him.
When Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko all died within only a few years of one another, a fascinating series of funerals expertly edited by Michael Ellis for humor and incredulity, Gorbachev fell into the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party out of necessity; he wasn’t that old and wouldn’t issue orders from his hospital room. Herzog guides Gorbachev through perestroika, Chernobyl, and into nuclear negotiations with Reagan. The old Russian crows he got rid of Intermediate and Short Range Ballistic Missiles. However, the audience has the benefit (curse?) of seeing around the corner. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty collapsed this year and these missile sets look like they are on their way back into the arsenals.
I was too young to closely follow world affairs in the late ‘80s, but those in positions to recognize history being made right in front of them missed it as well. When Hungary and Austria got together to remove the barbed wire border between them to test the Soviet Union’s reaction, Austrian news that evening led off with a segment on slugs in your garden. The Iron Curtain was collapsing, nobody could keep up with it, and the momentum ran away from everyone, including the Soviet elite. Herzog hints Gorbachev’s unpopularity will be temporary; in time, his pivotal role in late 20th-century events will be recognized and respected. Meeting Gorbachev is an apt catalyst to being that conversation.
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