The Making of Merkel with Andrew Marr BBC documentary 2013 about Angel M...

On the eve of the German federal elections, Andrew Marr looks at the enigmatic Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel. She is the most important politician in Europe and the most powerful woman in the world. Yet she has been criticized by some for her lack of charisma and accused by others of trying to turn Europe into a Greater Germany. Andrew Marr delves into her childhood and background to discover what has shaped her political vision and style. Growing up in East Germany, the paranoid state at the heart of the Communist Eastern Bloc, then becoming a research scientist, she only entered politics in her mid-thirties after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her political journey has been marked by caution and compromise - but with occasional flashes of ruthlessness and an unyielding commitment to European Union. In this film, Andrew Marr lifts the veil on a very unusual politician.
The Making of Merkel with Andrew Marr, BBC Two, review

Jasper Rees reviews The Making of Merkel with Andrew Marr, a BBC Two documentary profiling the profile of the German Chancellor.

By Jasper Rees

9:02PM BST 21 Sep 201/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10324297/The-Making-of-Merkel-with-Andrew-Marr-BBC-Two-review.html

Apparently Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks excellent English, is very witty, has a great analytical intelligence and is scrupulous about keeping these hidden from public sight. Indeed when she first met Tony Blair when still in opposition she warned him that she has no charisma and no idea how to communicate. The night the Berlin Wall came down, she kept a regular date at the sauna.

So how did such a person become the most powerful woman in the world? More pressingly for Andrew Marr, how do you make a film about such a person, especially without an interview?

The makers of The Making of Merkel with Andrew Marr (BBC Two) thought it was a good idea for starters to pepper the soundtrack with suggestible music. Cue The Ride of the Valkyries, because Merkel is a big fan of Wagner (no mention of another Chancellor’s fondness for same). This being the Cold War, there were also instrumental snippets from Bowie’s Berlin period and even Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

Actually the film didn’t need any such persiflage. An appealing composite portrait emerged via those who have known Merkel – from the school friend from the DDR who recalled “a plain and mousy girl but very nice and extraordinarily intelligent” to the film director Volker Schlöndorff, a confidant who still can’t decide if she’s “Machiavellian or just prudent”. Meanwhile, an interview with a photographer who has snapped Merkel since 1991 noted the slow acquisition of sheen and the phasing-out of unfortunate tartan jackets.

For Marr the parallel with Margaret Thatcher was overt: a career politician in it for the long haul, shaped by the circumstances of childhood and the thinking of a charismatic father, who was able to outflank barrel-chested phallocrats of national politics. If there was something missing here, it was testimony from anyone who can’t stick the woman. Greek or otherwise.