Laugh review - MR. KAPLAN by Alvaro Brechner

Does life end in your seventies? Is there a wider meaning in life? Is there any meaning in anything we do at all? These are some of the questions Alvaro Brechner asks himself in his comedy drama Mr. Kaplan, presented in the Laugh section of the 58th BFI London Film Festival.
 
Disguised as a mere comedy, also due to the fact that it is indeed genuinely funny, Mr. Kaplan is a film that genuinely deals with deep psychological manners in a sensitive and hilarious way. This is a story that gravitates around a 76-year-old transplanted Jew in Uruguay in the midst of a late life crisis. The drag and misery of his life leads him to a sudden investigation on a German owner of a bar on a beach, whom he believes a Nazi. With the help of an overweight man with his own personal needs for redemption, he draws us an outrageous plan to kidnap him and take him to Israel where he would be facing trials on charges of crimes against humanity. 
The two leading characters create a Laurel and Hardy style comedic duo that is only a mere representation of the vast array of comedic influences used by Alvaro Brechner, who wrote and directed the film. While the sharp mixture of comedy and drama follow a winning Chaplinesque tradition, there are vast styles of comedy exhibited in this film from slapstick to deadpan. Brechner shows plenty of delight in exploiting the ingenuity of his characters, as well as their very strange and dictating self-pride fuelled by a universally understandable dilemma of the search for a greater goal or even the meaning of life. But their actions never come across as laughable or ridiculous, because it is constantly understood that their desperate search is one that conceals a heartfelt necessity.
 
Of course, the success of the film is also thanks to the likeability of the titular character. This is thanks to the way he was drawn up - a close attention to particulars reveals that the filmmaker was inspired by a grandfather of his, who was reportedly also as nagging as he was sweet. But it is also thanks to the great performance by Hector Noguero, downtones and restrained that reveals more of an aged Buster Keaton deadpan appeal to him.
 
Yes, it is true, Mr. Kaplan gets its fair share of laughs, but it is ultimately its great success in utilising its dramatic element that adds a more rewarding three dimensional depth to its narrative. Brechner never forgets the serious aspects of the story, such as the one of the late-life crisis, mortality and even depression. On top of that, despite its lack of a truly defined political comment apart from its satirical use of Nazis hiding in South America as a pivotal point in the construction of the storyline of the film, there is also a very rewarding cultural background influence on the affect that the demons of past can have on an individual and the way in which it unconciously helps shape our minds, lives, conscience and even our future.