Meeting Gorbachev

 Americans remember Gorbachev primarily as an avuncular Russian leader mostly famous for an odd liver-colored birthmark on his upper brow.  The Soviet premier is revered in Europe, indeed, honored in Germany to the point of idolatry -- he is credited with establishing the conditions for the reunification of Germany, something that no one predicted and that most (for instance Guenter Grass) opposed.  (I recall attending a lecture from a German Fulbright scholar at the local Community College.  In that lecture, the professor quoted Malraux about loving Germany so much that he was happy that there were two of them.  The professor said that, not merely institutions, but, even, language now divided East Germany from the Bundesrepublik and that it was unimaginable that the two countries could ever be reunited -- this lecture was delivered about five months before the Fall of the Berlin Wall.)  It is said that only a Cold Warrior like Richard Nixon could go to China.  Similarly, it seems that only an exemplary Communist like Mikhail Gorbachev could have presided over the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  At one point, in his 2018 documentary, Meeting Gorbachev, Werner Herzog confesses that he "loves" the elderly Soviet premiere -- the film (jointly directed by Herzog and Andre Singer) begins with Herzog delivering a package of sugar-free Swiss chocolates to the man that Herzog familiarly refers to as Mikhail Sergeievich.  Everything that Herzog does is larger than life and the chocolates are about the size of planetary globes sealed in a box under a big chocolate plaque that reads "President Mikhail orbachev" -- the "G" was displaced in shipping. (The chocolates had to be sugar-free because the old man suffers from diabetes).

Meeting Gorbachev is epic in scope.  Herzog interviews many luminaries of the period during which the Soviet empire collapsed.  He has George Schultz on-screen, Lech Walesa, a former premiere of Hungary, James Baker and the like.  The documentary ranges from eccentric sequences (for instance, an interview with a frumpy secretary in the Kremlin typing out the order that dissolved the Soviet federation) to typical diplomatic "talking heads."  (Herzog seems to have interviewed a German diplomat and Gorbachev; the other interviews may be conducted by Andres Singer -- but we don't see him.  Herzog gets top billing with Mikhail Sergeievich.)  Characteristic to a Herzog film, there are peculiar digressions and asides.  Herzog is particularly impressed by Soviet mortuary customs -- there are long sequences involving processions in which waxen embalmed corpses are marched through wintry streets while funeral dirges play.  He notes that when Brezhnev awarded Gorbachev some sort of Soviet award, the leader was senile and couldn't recall what it was that he was honoring Gorbachev for --  Gorbachev has to tell him, mouthing the word "canal" so that he moribund old man can complete the award.  In another sequence, Herzog comments on the dramaturgy of Gorbachev's issuance of his order dissolving the Federation.  Gorbachev won't oblige the cameras who want to stage the signing for maximum effect.  There are plenty of oddities that will satisfy Herzog's legions of fans:  we get to see Soviet students at Moscow U "jitterbugging" to show the decadence of America:  it's a great sequence because the dancers obviously love the music but have to parody it --they keep dropping their female partners.  A hapless Austrian newscaster explains to her viewers how to keep slugs out of gardens (attract and kill them with beer) before casually remarking that the borders with Hungary are open.  The Hungarian premier notes that he had men cut down the barbed wire border in an exploratory manner to see if the Soviets would protest.  They didn't and so he had to erect 200 meters of the faux barbed wire border, already removed, to be able to hack it down on TV.  We see Norwegian tourists in Reykjavik at the Hofdi House reenacting Reagan's famous handshake with Gorbachev.  The documentary begins with hope and, even, suggests that there was a brief Pax Gorbachev around the time that the Berlin Wall fell (surprisingly undramatically shown in the film).  But the forces of evil, as Herzog would present the situation, are back on the rise.  Near the end of the film, we see a pallid and obsequious Vladimir Putin paying his respects at the casket of Gorbachev's wife, Raisa (another waxy embalmed corpse with Gorbachev kneeling red-eyed and smitten by the casket).  Gorbachev's later years, after the death of his glamorous wife ("it was as if my life was taken away," he says of her passing) are depicted as eerily becalmed.  We see him greeting an elderly aunt who is completely blind and can't see him.  In another long sequence, he wanders around what looks to be a half-abandoned farmyard, looking into bins, while an old cat stalks him.  (Only Herzog would dare to insert so much stillness and seemingly empty footage into the film to dramatize that nothing much has happened in Gorbachev's life since the death of his wife, many years ago in 2002.)   Gorbachev, unfortunately, is not a particularly vibrant interview subject.  He seems to be responding to Herzog's questions, phrased in English, through simultaneous translation through an ear-bed.  (Sometimes, he taps at his ear.)  There are disconcerting pauses, which Herzog honors, although they seem to make everyone a little uneasy.  Gorbachev is not a big man -- indeed, among Soviet premiers he was relatively lithe.  He's one of those old men who put on weight and seem to become more massive as they age.  He sits like boulder across the Herzog and speaks very slowly and deliberately -- just when you think he's done with his declaration, and a long silence intervenes, he starts talking again.  There's a funny scene in which Gorbachev comments on the coup d'etat attempted when he was vacationing in Crimea on the Black Sea.  Gorbachev says that he dealt too leniently with the conspirators and that he blames himself for not doing more to save the Federation -- instead of letting the breakaway republics leave the Union, he thinks he should have reformed the Union to keep them part of the Soviet Empire.  In any event, Gorbachev mentions that "(he) should have sent the conspirators off somewhere", obviously meaning Siberia.  At the end of the film, Gorbachev says that his grave (presumably he'll be interred in the Kremlin wall) should be marked "We Tried."  (It's like the quip about a statue of Marx and Engels in Berlin -- people said that the monument should be labeled:  "At least, we tried.  Sorry about that.  We'll get it right next time.") Gorbachev tries to recite a poem by Lermontov, almost gets to the end, but, then, can't recall the last lines.  A final epigraph supplies those lines for us.

It astonishing what we don't know about recent European history.  Much of the film is a primer on that subject and, therefore, worth seeing.  It's lucid, moving, and full of interesting footage.  Of course, the film is constrained by its subject and doesn't reach the ecstatic heights that we associate with Herzog's most visionary films.  The film suggests a thesis about Herzog.  The director, who is now 77, spent much of his youth wandering around forbidden zones in Africa and South America -- he was almost murdered in Africa.  I suspect that this wanderlust arose in part from growing up in a country in which half of the nation was concealed behind a closed border and a forbidden zone itself.