Movie Review: Meeting Gorbachev

Meeting Gorbachev *** / *****

Directed by: Werner Herzog and André Singer.

 

The approach of Werner Herzog and Andre Singer in Meeting Gorbachev is fairly simple and straightforward – I’ve seen the film described as Werner Herzog reads Gorbachev’s Wikipedia page, and while that is slightly unfair, it’s also kind of true. The target audience for this film seems to be people who don’t know a lot about the USSR’s final leader – either because they didn’t live through the era, or did, and didn’t pay too much attention to Gorbachev, except as the leader of the big, bad Soviets. The film is interested in rehabbing that image a little bit – making it clear that he deserves as much, if not more, credit for ending the Cold War as Reagan, Bush and everyone else in the West. That case has been made – more than once in better ways by this point, so much so that’s it’s not even that controversial anymore. This film is essentially Herzog recounting Gorbachev’s life and legacy – either at the audience or directly to Gorbachev himself – now in his late 80s, but still sharp as a tack.

 

Because the film runs a fleet 90 minutes, it offers really only a high level view of Gorbachev and his life – pretty much dispensing with everything until the mid-1980s in about 5 minutes, to focus on Gorbachev’s time in office – how his efforts at reform helped to transform Soviet Society, and how it led really to the USSR’s dissolution. It looks at the Cold War, and Nuclear Proliferation – which seems to be of most interest to Herzog than anything else.

 

The strange thing about the film is even though Gorbachev is still obviously very smart, and remembers everything – the interviews with him aren’t as interesting as they should be. Does he not understand the translation? Does he not want to offend the current Russian government? Is he just not as interested in some of the things Herzog is asking about? I’m not sure – but the film is probably more insightful either when Herzog is talking himself to the audience, or when he’s doing interviews with others who were there at the time – either on the American or German sides of all these talks.

 

The film moves quickly through the years when Gorbachev was in power – keeping a light tone throughout. It is admittedly more than a little funny as Herzog details the few years leading up to Gorbachev taking over power – where one ancient Soviet leader after another takes control, for a year or so at a time, before they die  - until he finally takes over. Then it breezes through the rest of the time there. You wish some of these discussions went a little deeper – that Herzog seemed willing to push back on anything Gorbachev said (like Chernobyl for example) – but he seems more than content to simply let Gorbachev spin his own narrative, sometimes injecting in voiceover.

 

There is, of course, nothing particularly new here. There are no revelations here that couldn’t be gleamed elsewhere before. Even in the last act, which takes on more emotional resonance than the other parts of the film when it focuses on Gorbachev’s beloved wife – who died in 1999 – relies on footage from a different documentary for some of that emotional punch.

 

Still, I do think there is value in looking at the past, to see if we can learn something about the difficult political situation we are currently in – with tensions between Russia and America becoming high (except when it comes to their leaders, who are chummy). And there is always value in listening to Herzog – who never found a simple, boring way to say anything. You kind of wish this film went deeper than it does – but even as it is, it’s interesting and entertaining.