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1. April 2021 - Haider lebt
Austria 2002
produced by
Joao Pedrosa, Peter Kern (executive) for Alma Film
directed by Peter Kern
starring August Diehl, Traute Höss, Heinrich Herki, Günter Tolar, Hilde Sochor, Johannes Thanheiser, Christine Keufmann, Paulus Manker, Robert Hauer-Riedl, Urs Hefti, Hanspeter Müller, Alena Baich, Michou Friesz, Peter Turrini, Robert Schindel, Marlene Streeruwitz, Helmut Berger, Michael Schottenberg, Wolfgang Makula, Christian nisslmüller, Christoph Eder, Conny de Beauclair, Thomas Strasser, Jeremy Smith, Rodolf Kräuma, Willibald Meierhofer, Sabine Furtenbach, Lisa Haag, Marlies Lick, Emil Gallé, Silvia Hagler, Christian Lick, Carmen Malin, Stefan Pohl
written by Peter Kern
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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The year is 2021: Austria is to be taken over by George W.Bush's USA,
and Austrian chancellor Jörg Haider (Heinrich Herki) has been
assassinated in this connection for whatever reason. Though not everybody
believes he's dead, like German documentary filmmaker Kaiser (August
Diehl), who will do whatever it takes to track Haider down, even if the
American oppressors try to prevent that at all costs. Eventually,
Kaiser tracks down Haider's vice chancellor (and former lover) Susanne
Riess-Passer (Traute Höss) and keeps trailing her in hopes she will lead
him to Haider ... but she leads him only to Haider's grave. End of
story? Nope, because all of a sudden, former chancellor Wolfgang
Schüssel's (Günter Tolar) travelling political circus passes by, and on
it, Riess-Passer notices her Jörg Haider, kept in a cage with other
politicians. Still being in love with him, Riess-Passer crawls into the
cave to be with Haider, and when Kaiser finds out he's actually
Riess-Passer and Haider's son, he joins them inside ... but then Schüssel
fetches a machine gun and shoots them all dead. To properly
understand 1. April 2021 - Haider lebt, one has to have a rough
idea of the Austrian political landscape in the early 2000's: After
terrible losses in the 1999 election, Wolfgang Schüssel's conservative
People's Party (ÖVP) - then third strongest force of the nation - went
into coalition with the (even in Austria) widely disliked right wing
Freedom Party (FPÖ) - second strongest force - and made himself
chancellor, this way playing a trick on the FPÖ's controversial
leader Jörg Haider, who once had the goal to become chancellor in 1998
(he didn't succeed). Austria was then sanctioned for its gouvernment by
the EU, and it was disliked even within the country, but in all honesty,
Wolfgang Schüssel proved to be the first man able to keep Jörg Haider at
bay. All these facts are only indirectly connected to the film at hand,
a movie that tries very hard to make a political statement, but only
manages to collect a handful of Austrian left wing celebrities to make
what is supposed to be a satire - but as a satire, the movie lacks both
irony and actual relevance. What remains is a sloppily told story about
nothing in particular but with loads of name-dropping to fake insight and
that's not really held together by the narrative device of the
documentary. A lack of directorial ideas doesn't halp either of course. In
other words, a very unnecessary film about a subject matter that was
especially in 2002 in bad need of good political satire. By the
way, the actual end of Jörg Haider (which happened only after the release
of the film) was a tragic one as well: In 2005, he split away from the
FPÖ (apparently he was no longer right-wing enough) to form his own
party, the BZÖ, which only caused political ripples compared to the waves
the FPÖ had caused. In 2008, Haider died in a car crash he caused himself
after drinking about a bottle of Vodka in an alleged gay club - a story of
course ripe for conspiracy theories ...
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