Mark Reviews Movies: MEETING GORBACHEV

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 9, 2019

Werner Herzog sits with Mikhail Gorbachev and makes the case that the final President of the Soviet Union was one of the most important figures of the 20th century—vital to the changes of his time in power but now overlooked and nearly forgotten by history. It's a sound argument, considering everything that happened to change the state of the world while he was in charge of the USSR, but the purpose of Meeting Gorbachev ends with a recitation of the subject's career, his accomplishments, and his belittling exit from the world stage.

We expect a bit more from Herzog, who interviews Gorbachev on three separate occasions and co-directed the movie with Andre Singer. Part of the issue with this surface-level documentary is that Herzog himself seems to expect a bit more from Gorbachev.

It's clear that the filmmaker doesn't want this to be a simple biography, given the probing and often leading questions that he presents to the then-87-year-old Gorbachev. Even so, Gorbachev mostly discusses policies and politics from an impersonal perspective. Meanwhile, Herzog wants the man to admit and dwell upon the idea that he is a tragic figure, who could have accomplished even more, if not for the rush toward dissolving the Soviet Union by people who saw the chance to take power for themselves.

The lasting impression here is that Gorbachev is pragmatic about his career, while Herzog is unwaveringly stubborn in trying to make his subject fit into some preconceived box. During the most substantial interview, it's often the case that the filmmaker's questions are as long as or longer than Gorbachev's initial answers. There could be an assortment of reasons for this (Two immediately come to mind: Gorbachev's declining health, and communicating through unseen translators), but the end result is that neither man seems to be on the other's wavelength.

This leaves Herzog and Singer to fill in the blanks, with a narrated biography and additional interviewees, who are more inclined to tell the story that Herzog wants to hear, as well as footage from a different documentary, in which Gorbachev is more open about discussing his late wife. The interviewer-interviewee relationship in Meeting Gorbachev isn't antagonistic (Herzog admires the man too much, and Gorbachev seems genuinely happy to have this opportunity), but the two men are at odds in what they want to accomplish here. The movie suffers for it.

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