I’m a little late to the party, which is probably because I wasn’t invited. I’m not interested in fashion. I can barely write prêt-à-porter and haute couture and I certainly can’t tell the difference. All I know about Yves Saint-Laurent is that he was born with a nervous breakdown, but I don’t remember who actually said that. I find supermodels really boring and luxury always a little obscene, and as for Karl Lagerfeld: he’s been around for as long as I’ve lived, and the best I can say is that he didn’t bother me in his matter-of-fact way.
So I’m not part of the target audience for “Becoming Karl Lagerfeld,” and I walked past the many posters advertising the series rather unmoved. The fact that I’ve seen the six episodes now was more or less an accident, which also happens on sofas, and had something to do with Daniel Brühl, who I knew was a good actor. That was obvious in “Inside Wikileaks,” “The Encirclement,” and most recently in “All Quiet on the Western Front.” But, hand on heart: I didn’t know how incredibly, fabulously good Daniel Brühl is before I saw him as Karl Lagerfeld.
Of course, he benefits from a series that is excellently made: the script is based on an apparently very interesting book (“Kaiser Karl”, which I of course do not know), the direction and camera produce excellent images, the set (which is a must in this case) is exquisite, and the actors at Daniel Brühl’s side (Sunnyi Melles as the ageing Marlene Dietrich, Arnaud Valois as Saint-Laurent) do a great job, especially Théodore Pellerin as Jacques de Bascher, who was something like Lagerfeld’s partner (of course I did not know him either).
But none of this explains Brühl’s legendary performance, because playing Karl Lagerfeld is terribly difficult, if not actually impossible, because, if I, the ignorant, understand it correctly: the man has been playing himself his entire life. Brühl slips into a role that only exists as a role – and how else could that end than in an involuntary parody? Isn’t this fan, for example, actually always carnival? Isn’t this unmistakable, always slightly hasty articulation impossible to copy because the copy immediately seems like cabaret? Especially since in such a case you would only hear how, not what, is being said.
Brühl’s secret: he doesn’t copy Lagerfeld at all, he transforms him, and a mask (or one of the many masks Lagerfeld wore over the course of his long life) isn’t even necessary. Of course there are props – the fan, the glasses, the ponytail and sometimes rather strange boots – but they are no more obtrusive than the watch worn over his cuff, and Brühl uses them extremely sparingly and precisely for that reason with great naturalness.
He doesn’t even wear a body suit: he walks a little, sometimes he snaps a little when he speaks, but he doesn’t even try to show the audience an external Lagerfeld. Brühl essentially looks like Brühl when he plays an internal Lagerfeld: a lonely and often wounded man, but also a hard, occasionally cruel, almost absurdly strong-willed man whose extraordinary intelligence often condemns him to work alone.
You see, I started thinking about Karl Lagerfeld. But above all, Daniel Brühl showed me how effective outstanding acting is. It brings us closer to something that we never even knew how much it touches us.
“Becoming Karl Lagerfeld” is available on Disney.
