Germany's Got Talent. Happy beginnings open THE AUDITION, a well-crafted documentary by Till Harms that premieres in the Berlinale’s Perspektive Deutsches Kino. And aptly, it gives us a perspective on the future of cinema in Germany.
“Congratulations, you have been accepted to Hanover Acting Academy.” Crying ensues as well as incredulous callbacks to make sure this isn't a prank call. Understandable, as we later work out the odds. 10 out of 687 win this lottery –one girl on her 24th try-- that is not that different from American Idol, without the glamour but with all the meaningful glances and the Simon Cowell-esque character.
How did we get to this point?
THE AUDITION chronicles the sobering 10-day entrance exam, which is shown to be prosaically administrative and repetitively pedestrian but at the same time emotionally challenging and dead serious. In that field of tension, the documentary succeeds and retains a playfulness befitting the subject matter. It is even unexpectedly hilarious and entertaining. “We're trying to addition you in, not out,”
one teacher calms everybody’s nerves, although it turns out the jury has a hard time filling all the spots. Just as I am thinking I would take nearly all of the candidates, my perspective on the prospective students is sharpened, quietly in the back of my mind, through the eyes of the nine colourful examiners.
THE AUDITION can be seen as a counter or companion piece to Andres Veiel’s much lauded 2004 long-term study ADDICTED TO ACTING that focused on the applicants, while Harms looks at the system and the decision-makers. A “permeable point system”, as the process is described, has road signs but in the end gets decided by (contradictory) voting on who can work with whom. This is art not science.
While I spent the first third of the film deploring this procedural angle a bit, wanting to know more about the applicants, the film increasingly approaches the budding actors. In doing so, it mirrors what the jurors go through, from encountering a mass of anonymous hopefuls to the slow wittling down to a group of young actors they see and discuss again and again in various roles and constellations. Young people who go out of their way to make their mark, to the point where
I sometimes can't tell if the audition has started or ended.
Perhaps there is a bit too much pontificating by the professors, but that in itself is telling. Very slowly you get a sense of what the jury is looking for:
energy, authenticity, “emotional magnitude”, as they exercise absolute subjectivity (or gut feeling or instinct or decades’ experience) in trying to see something that isn't there yet. “Why do they all sit during their auditions, that limits their physical scope so much,” one juror wonders. Over the next few scenes you do notice everyone is sitting.
Smart, thoughtful showing-more-than-telling filmmaking. Through the formally stark camera work and the framing shots of the Siberian brutalist architecture of post-war Hanover in the winter, you get an idea of how lonesome this is for the students, how excruciating and how little interactive as they pace the hall ways, warming up and trying to get into the right mind-set. One silly question like “Should I do it in costume?” gets a minimal frown and, we viewers gaspingly know, immediate mental judgment from the panel.
Within our current North American discourse around #OscarsSoWhite, international audiences might have to swallow hard a few times during some frank European discussions of political (in)correctness and flippant sideswipes at diversity. But the one young black German actor and the one Asian-German actress in the large group both make it in -- by virtue of their strong, creative auditions, not some affirmative action plan.
The stakes get higher and more controversial. One professor-applicant exchange runs like a threat. “You always meet twice in life!” says an animated refusé, standing close, and the juror can't wait for the elevator door to open fast enough to get away.
In the end, I come out with a better sense if not knowledge of what a good actor looks like feels likes walks like moves like. At over two hours a bit of tightening and tidying up could have helped overall. But again Harms justifies himself when the third and final round, which is more first training then audition, adds yet another piece to this puzzle in attempting a speculative interpretation of the physical disconnect or the visual oversaturation of the millennial acting students.
For what comes (or leaves) 20 or 30 years later in an acting career, see in the Berlinale-opening Coen comedy HAIL CAESAR.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
